27 SEPTEMBER 1986, Page 41

Gone

You were always so slow to take your leave, Crumbs and tobacco dripping from your clothes As you wheezed up from the depths of an armchair Like the sea-spilling, barnacled Mary Rose.

Cumuli of pipe-smokers would fill the porch As you made heavy weather of your wellingtons Or fished in every pocket for a neckscarf, Fingering your toggles like precious stones.

And still the time to reach into that chest Of yours for a word about the chances Of rain tonight, or to stand like a pillar By the lawn-edge, inhaling the chrysinths.

Salt of the earth, monument to monuments, Who never hurried anywhere — except this once.

Blake Morrison