Edwin Morgan 1920-2010

Grey Granite mourns the death of Edwin Morgan who died on Thursday aged 90. His astonishingly broad range of poetic forms and subject matter reflected his zest for life, his humanity, his erudition, his courage, stoicism and unquenchable optimism. Above all his poems 'demonstrated his joy in the small print of being alive'.

At Eighty

 

Push the boat out, compañeros,

push the boat out, whatever the sea.

Who says we cannot guide ourselves

through the boiling reefs, black as they are,

the enemy of us all makes sure of it!

Mariners, keep good watch always

for that last passage of blue water

we have heard of and long to reach

(no matter if we cannot, no matter!)

in our eighty-year-old timbers

leaky and patched as they are but sweet

well seasoned with the scent of woods

long perished, serviceable still

in unarrested pungency

of salt and blistering sunlight. Out,

push it all out into the unknown!

Unknown is best, it beckons best,

like distant ships in mist, or bells

clanging ruthless from stormy buoys.

Edwin Morgan

Edwin Morgan