You were in the world’s extreme corner
able to go beyond and forget.

But corner follows corner, the re-entangling of the poet
does not permit an end.

Far to the west you reached out hands

symmetrical from the meridian, offering gold,

an ocean boundary, a pioneer of freedom,

a neatly docketed history, right to the edge.

Singing you learned and taught at large.

Back home, they struck you from the record,

limbo for looking round too many corners,

when you go back to the surface, webs of words
linked the world loosely, though not precisely

comfortable, each in its separate dissonance,
its approximate rhythmic sympathy,

the diplomatic balance.

Late, when the east sought out your wisdom
but failed to mark the extreme corner,

dropped you in the ignominy of the shopping mall
exposed to random shots, irrelevance.

Can you forgive us? We shall not forget
the care we owed, the bitterness of fact
we failed to face. The firewood of this world
is overlaid with glitter and deception.
Yet as we send you homeward, soaring above
no crow or vulture intercepts your insight
to the extreme corner and what lies beyond.