Friends,
In bidding farewell to our friend, I would like to share some of his final words:
From "Deliverance Day":
Let Thomas Tallis and Josquin des Prez
be my composers on Deliverance Day.
From "Antistrophe: Holy Cross Cemetery" (from his "Ode: Yes, Lord, But Not Yet"):
Only our ashes, no skeletal bones,
poet I have engraved on both our stones.
And finally, from his last poem, "Lonesome Dove Revisited", composed in his head several days before his death, which he dictated to his brother, Jim. It is based on happy remembrances of thirty years of hunting with his friend, Steve Syrdal:
Hip fractured, riddled with cancer, nearly dead—
"By God, Hell of a party!" Murphy said.
Adieu, mon ami!
Cathy