A BEAUTIFUL WIND Brian Louis Pearce, 1933-2006 Overhearing voices, attempting to name strangeness, mixing texts and opening memories, I desperately delay grief. Vans were being loaded as I found out that you had already dashed on ahead, made your final ever move. Checkmate, game ended, pieces tipped over in disarray. If we could live with no sense of dying we wouldn't be human, you wouldn't be you. You are no longer you. Reaching beyond sorrow I ponder this particular death, your private navigation of the world. Living in the house full of holes, your imagination is given free reign, room to manoeuvre and dart, outwit the angels and confuse new neighbours with oblique reference and obsessions, playful puns, your perceptive talk. The possibility of possessing happiness seemed always pushed aside; words were ever so much more important. Now you will never answer my questions nor compile that reader you planned. Another unpublished novel of yours is hidden in my computer's memory, many more in your abandoned brain. You might learn to let go of language, experience drive you along, rather than recall and capture. You might learn to dance or fly, be given perfect sight. You are in the house full of holes now, where you always knew you would be. It is a beautiful wind that blows the spirit home. Having begun by calling for truth we must now trust the silence and question no more. A beautiful wind blows wherever you are. © Rupert M Loydell 2006