[Orwn Acra]

"At this they swept me, singing up to heaven,
Where angels’ hands received my battered soul."

[Ed Shacklee]

Good one. Walter is quoting from one of Lister's poems, "The Judgement." Lister had a funny way with death. For those who've never seen it, I'll copy the rest out here:


THE JUDGMENT

I dreamed the judgment came to me by night
They stood around my bed, severe of mien
And asked one question “what is enstatite?”

“It is an orthorhombic pyroxene,”
I said, and as I spoke I heard the jangle
Of planets crashing down the cosmic seas.

I added hastily: “Its cleavage angle
is eighty-seven (more or less) degrees.
If it were fifty-six, not eighty-seven

We should, quite clearly, have an amphibole.”
At this they swept me, singing up to heaven,
Where angels’ hands received my battered soul.

[Ed Shacklee]

SISTER, COME SOON
By R.P. Lister

Sister, come soon, come soon, this is the house you seek,
Come today or come tomorrow or come next week,
The garden gate is unbolted and the door ajar;
Come early, come early my star.

Do not delay, sister, time is not standing still,
The leaves turn brown on the trees and the moorbirds honk on the hill,
Jupiter peers at me boldly with beady eye;
Sister draw nigh.

Sister, the bridal gown lies fading in Father’s trunk,
The little boys are away and the wine is drunk,
The Post Office man has taken away the telephone;
Come early, come early, my own.

Come as I lie in bed and lay your hand on my brow,
Once it was petal-smooth, rhinoceros-wrinkled now;
We shall sit at evening watching dim embers burn.
O sister, return.

Lank grows the grass in the yard that the goats of childhood cropped,
The roof has fallen in and the clocks have stopped.
Time has destroyed it all, all that Time can destroy;
Come early, come early my joy.

[Jerome Betts]

Sad news indeed, but good to know RPL lived long enough to enjoy the results of Steve's literary detective work.
And what Gregory said about a Collected or Selected.

[Ed Shacklee]

DARLING DEATH
By R. P. Lister

Come and get me, darling Death,
But not yet:
There’s a lot worth living for.
So don’t forget
To wait until I’ve drawn my very final breath.

And even then I might have more
To say or do before I go.
So
Be reasonably slow.

To be in haste
Would be in the very worst of taste.
There’s a great deal I have to do;
Some of it old, some of it new.
Some tales to tell, some pots to glue.

And even then, there might be more to come.
“O the brave music of a distant drum!”

[Nigel Mace]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Nigel Mace]

My first best man who was, in his own way, as extra-ordinary as RPL, chose Lister's Idle Demon as one of his myriad of school prizes and, after John's death, I have it still. No book, of any kind, has meant more to me throughout all of life's vicissitudes, and when my partner Vanessa and I met Richard two years ago it was to discover that the wonderful, renaissance man John and I had always imagined from his poetry was exactly what Richard was. He invited me to read him some of my favourites of his poems and, to my delight, confirmed my sense of how their subjects had engaged him, particularly "The Old Peasant" and "Three Triolets". We have lost a humane giant as well as one of the most talented and beautifully expressive persons it was possible to imagine. Wry, witty, touching and deeply sincere R. P. Lister was all that our debased civility has lost. Now his poetry will remind of us of the world that might have been. Amidst the universe's "reek of turpentine", I hope he can scent our incense of remembrance on the breeze. He is unforgettable, deeply mourned and ever impishly present as we confront the difficult world he now has left. Presumably now he knows whether, as to the road on which we all tread, he "was off it/Or on."

[Jayne Osborn]

That's a lovely tribute, Nigel.

I met Richard a couple of years ago too, when an actor called Donald Pelmear recited a great many of the 87 poems in The Idle Demon. It was an amazing feat and Richard must have been very proud, sitting quietly in the audience. I had the book in my hand and followed Donald as he performed; he was almost word perfect, with maybe just the occasional 'and' instead of 'but' or something!

It was an event I will always remember, and I'm SO grateful to Steve for acquainting us with RPL.

Jayne

[Janice D. Soderling]

Lament of an Idle Demon

It's quiet in Hell just now, it's very tame,
The devils and the damned alike lie snoring.
Just a faint smell of sulphur, not much flame;
The human souls come here and find it boring.

Satan, the poor old Puritan, sits there
Emitting mocking laughter once a minute;
Idly he scans a page of Baudelaire
And wonders how he once saw evil in it.

He sips his brimstone at the Demons' Club
(His one amusement now he's superseded)
And keeps complaining to Beelzebub
That men make hotter hells than ever he did.

**

The Revolutionaries

O tremble, all ye earthly Princes,
Bow down the crowned and chrism'd nob;
Wise is the Potentate that winces
At the just clamour of the mob.

Shiver, ye Bishops, doff your mitres,
Huddle between your empty pews
Here comes a horde of left-wing writers
Brandishing salmon-pink reviews.

Comes the New Age. Your outworn faces
Vanish at our enlightened curse,
While we erect in your old places
Something considerably worse.

Both from "The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse" (1978), chosen and edited by Kingsley Amis.

[Alex Pepple]

That's sad news. Thank you, Steve, for introducing him to Eratosphere in that wonderful quest you initiated, and which we all joined you in, and for facilitating things for him as the featured poet in the Inaugural issue of Able Muse, print edition.

He'll be missed, but not forgotten with his extensive body of work in multiple genres.

Cheers,
...Alex