When William Butler Yeats died in January 1939, W.H. Auden eulogized him as follows:
“He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.”
This is a short section of the longer poem. But given our recent cold and blustery weather, deep freezes in North America and Europe, the world and our own island seemingly on the brink of many political, social and cultural upheavals (Auden wrote in 1939 with the world on the brink of World War 2), death a growing, unsettling reality for those who are Gandolph’s generation – the words of this poem seemed appropriate.
Gandolph “Abbeystone” St. Clair was born April 3rd 1951. He passed away at the Victoria Hospital after a brief illness on Sunday February 11th.
He attended St. Aloysius R.C. Boys’ Infant and Primary, Vide Bouteille Government School, Choiseul R.C. Boys’ primary and St. Mary’s College. He studied at Brixton College and West Norwood Polytechnic in London between 1969-1971, and Burnhampthorpe Collegiate of Canada in 1994.
When he came to Castries to school, he lived with his uncle, Matthew “Abby” St. Clair, at 36 Coral Street, the legendary principal of the R.C. Boys’ School. Hence the nickname inherited by Gandolph, “Abby.”
In a moving short lyric in his last book “The Calabash tree,” Gandolph paid tribute to his uncle: “It has been many nights like this one/Listening to my heart’s reverberating tone/Thinking of this one great human being/who took me to his heart’s ever living/Showed me compassion and tenderness/In a way my own parents didn’t deliver…” (“Deaf Announcement”)
Read more here.