Poems by Jeremy Gadd

There will be no pause at his passing.
The state won’t send him on his way
with a public holiday or order
monuments in his memory.

His demise won’t be noted in the media.
No-one will write his obituary,
deliver a lengthy eulogy at a
well attended funeral ceremony.

Politicians won’t decorate his cortege;
no minister, magnate or magistrate
will dirty their shoes in his wake;
there will be few wreaths to remember him.

There will be no one minute silence.
No flags fluttering at half mast
while mourners dutifully reflect upon
some momentous accomplishment past.

Nor did he spend his waking hours
in the so-called public service
or aspire to forge a fortune in futures.
He had no desire to set the world on fire.

For while the movers and the shakers,
the empire builders and their breakers,
were busy with their bricks and mortar,
he was more interested in their daughters.

Refusing to be led like a lamb to slaughter,
he turned away from the dealers in dollars
who went to work in ties and collars
and wore open toed sandals instead.

He couldn’t become an industrial tycoon,
publicizing his name on the side
of some promotional blimp or balloon,
he found such aspirations facile,

and began a quest of a different style.
Not for him the blind pursuit
of ephemeral success and fame,
he decided to pursue different game.

Beguiled by the beauty of the beast
he sought the knowledge of the heart and,
in the process of devouring Nature’s feast,
found fabulous wealth where wealth was least.

For, if assailed by Winter’s cold,
sunlight is more valuable than gold
and the lost sailor is rich with delight
beneath the diamonds of a star filled night.

So leaping off the intellectual fence,
and ignoring physics and biochemistry,
he started to search for the essence
of his inner-being and psyche.

Like the early Gnostic scholars,
he studied the secrets of the soul
and discovered hidden treasures
disdained by those seeking worldly pleasures.

And during that protracted search
through his inner, angst-ridden Id,
he found contentment in existing
shone brightest through all he thought or did.

Yet any captain of industry – or other
upholder of temporal and secular
authority – would have considered him
to be an apathetic under-achiever.

But the poet saw infinity in an hour and
the purpose of being in ephemeral flowers;
he saw the human spirit is unique,
sometimes pure, more often weak.

He saw that rain refreshes the earth;
that what is lost can be found;
that seeds are encouraged to germinate
by the fire that scorches the ground:

that when we laugh at our own despair,
we sow hope into the air; for we are made
of wind and sky and live forever in
loved one’s hearts, even after we die.