A word is a word is a word is a word

Gertrude Stein, on her deathbed, asked to the people around her "What is the answer?" As she didn't get any reply, she continued: "In that case … what is the question?"

Adapted from What Is Remembered (1963) by Alice Babette Toklas (1877-1967), Stein's lifelong partner.

As soon as I wrote this, the name Stein reminded me of Conrad's Lord Jim, and all of a sudden I was engulfed in a memory which I couldn't process up until now. I grabbed my diary and after a few minutes completed the following poem from my notes.

The Professor

The shaking hand

the mind stuck

inside the husk

the eye thanking

the eyelid twitching

in fond remembrance

and the implacable thirst

the cotton dipped in apple juice

dabbed on the gums to quench the pain

you were staring at the ceiling

when I timidly stepped into the room –

quite unlike your wife twenty years ago.

we had stayed until she had left

then we left and she stayed

and we were all stayed

yesterday it was your left side

prostrate arm and leg, drooping eyelid

which was stuck in time, in place

today your right side succumbed

but for your arm, and your toes

yet you don't seem to be moving at all

I wonder if you have died

but your eyes hold their ground

you groan, you stare into my eyes

you want something which you cannot name

so I hold the magic slate and the felt-tip

fell like your felt hat, long ago,

askew, in dashing silken white

the feeble fingers grip the pen

the instinctive grasp

the way you've always held your pen

on this second try you write

the last, terrible, clear-minded

“I am gone.”

You couldn't realise this

but these last words

are your last logos with me,

cenotaphing your memorial

in the graveyard of the mind

you remind me of Kurtz on his deathbed,

uttering the four words which sent

me on a life-long quest for the truth.

You had peeked behind the veil

had a foot across the threshold

you spoke your truth, aporia of a man

the glint which beckons to read on

so I recite and scan, give you Auden

because you had given it to me

two decades or so ago

Sunny Prestatyn wrinkles your eye

in cheeky souvenir

your inward eye sees the same

field of daffodils

which you made me see

I'm glad you got to keep that inward eye

and suddenly you grow tired

the day has waned

you frown when I don't understand,

tire of repeating, your mind alert

and pointing to the obvious

locked in the sarcophagus

of your own body.

You mean something I cannot yet understand.

Today, you have gone.

In fond memory of Philip L., who guided my first footsteps in the world of English Literature, who nurtured and listened, patiently advised, read and commented, inspired. We eventually became friends over our mutual passion for words, written and spoken, and thought. He was a funny, eccentric fellow and you'd be hard put to find a student who didn't like him. He had a great mind for quotes, and bequeathed me books when I left university...which were the same books which I read to him on the day I visited him at the hospital a few weeks after he had a stroke, a few weeks before he passed away. Each of his movements demanded he drew on a diminishing reserve of strength, which gave the slightest sigh greater significance, which gave his gazes greater heartache. Whatever awaits us, I hope you have found the rest you deserve, my dear friend.