The Poet, David Wright

At school in South Africa, we were never taught about David Wright. He was never discussed or even really mentioned. 

It was only once I had moved to the UK, did I learn of him and the fact that he was being called "the foremost South African poet of his generation" by the Daily Telegraph.

David Wright was born in South Africa 23 February 1920. At seven years old, he was deafened as a result of scarlet fever. Moving to England seven years later.

By Patrick Swift (1960)

On a Friend Dying 
by David Wright

I should speak in the past tense 

But do not, for it seems 

What was has an existence, 

If only of images. 

Remains a scene as still 

As water, as fragile, 

Floating a ghostly 

Reflection. Immobile 

Summer of long late-lit 

Evenings in a dingy street. 

A swung glow of the Marquis 

Door seen from Rathbone Place. 

And there remains a large room full of flowers 

    Imaged on canvases, the real ones still in the garden, 

And books and objects I've known for thirty years. 

    Unknown to me I am taking a final leave of them 

And the woman no longer young but more beautiful 

    Than the young girl had been, who held all these together. 

Yet that web woven over so long shall not unravel, 

    Though the lives and bonds disperse like the furniture 

To disassociation. Eternity, when one thinks of it, 

    Exists in what has been, there residing. 

In what's done and can't be changed is immortality, 

    Though I may not be long remembering. 

The summer of pilotless planes, 

Of searchlit nights and soft, 

When once upon a scare 

Together we ran out 

Into the naked garden 

High over Archway, and 

The warm leaves of laurel 

Trembled in no wind. 

Larger in death, mythical, those figures, 

Yankel Adler, David Archer, Colquhoun and MacBryde; 

Not failed gods, because our gods were failures 

Standing in broken shoes with half-pints of Scotch ale. 

Now would I say that it is nine o'clock at the Wheatsheaf, 

That it will not be long before the place is full. 

Who was it who said 

Friends are born, not made? 

I remember, as now 

You no longer do, 

The recognition 

Across a long room; 

After the eyes met 

Was articulate 

Before we had spoken 

What had always been.