Epitaph
He said he always wished there were
And easy answer to the world.
He said he always wanted problems
That the teacher knew were solved
Several hundred years ago,
When England was still cold.
He was the middleman in everything;
Wore a suit and talked the talk:
Never the straight answer told,
But always it was there,
Waiting,
Just in case
The truth ever needed out.
Most of the time, of course,
Things were better off without.
I know he hated pioneers,
He told me so himself,
One night we'd finished off the beers
And half the liquor shelf.
I thought at first he loathed the striving,
The search for something new,
But he was scared that there were things
That no one human knew.
I know now that it was then,
Walking home with the rising sun,
That he became a myth to me.
I don't think I looked at him again
Without a sense that he'd become
Some sort of human mystery.
The people closest to your heart
Are thought of in 3D,
But the postman, dustman, lawyer,
And the people on TV
Live in a paler, staler state
Of gaunt humanity,
And in that paler, staler state
He lived as myth to me.
Every time I thought of him,
Each time I shook his fleshy hand,
Throughout every conversation,
I looked for the missing link
That would make me understand
His point of view.
Where he's gone and who he's with
Are different debates,
And for many of you he'll be more
Than a riddle yet unsolved,
But I, half-stranger, puzzle still
For an answer no one knows.