I heard your voice again the other day
Having left the radio on, in hope of cricket
Whilst hammering down the summer’s new deck.
Jarrah, as it happens with all attendant guilts
Of western forests raped but it will outlive me
And mine, some memorial at least.

You were reading now in English and why not?
It has been more than twenty years since we met,
Briefly as colleagues. To that inevitable question
You answered, “I’m a poet” and I cringed anticipating
A task of politely appreciating some ill-scanning doggerel.
The fate of every teacher I suppose.

But you were of course. A clue was in your lack of need
To impose. I read a fragment – a desperate Herakles
Paralysed by angst at the absurdity of those labours – and
I knew it. One of your first in this tongue but still Greek.
And I could only read the pale and filtered text
Of your translator in that book you signed for me.

There seemed a melancholy in the voice I heard again,
A tone familiar in my own head now; it comes with pains
Of ageing and experience. But I remembered then
The comment of my mother on my own poor efforts;
“Couldn’t you write something cheerful for a change”
And realised my foolishness.

Sitting on the new milled wood in the harsh sun,
Breathing in the rising dust and warmed resins
Like a boat builder of Ithaca or the oracle, I wondered
If you were still alive. Or was that voice, that tape
A captured fragment of another hero pondering
The pointlessness of a life’s labours and triumphs?