GEOFFREY HILL PASSES

We met to chat in the sun
about poetry and literature
ten minutes from
Boston University's
Sherman Union
cultural center years ago
when the flashing lights shone
on the Charles River
in the early Fall snow
your wife Alice asks us
to pray for his exiled soul
having an after life in Jesus
and to light a candle for him
who was a believer,
as the Elm trees shiver
on the campus
where you read and lectured
with understanding compassion
for the holocaust victims
those interval of thoughts
are not lost
in your poet's compassion
at the itinerant wars over
Biafra or Ruanda
or the Catholic martyrs
like the championed poets
Robert Southwell
or Edmund Campion
for you knowing the cost
of being a Christian
and those who
merely use religion
only as in a politician's fashion,
goodbye my friend, Geoffrey
except for your words
as as I see three blue birds
over the Atlantic surge
to the third heaven.