Gerard Benson

     for Cathy

You were a good age as Dad would say;
like him, mid-eighties, but still young and still
knowing your own quick and open-hearted mind
while your body closed down round you.  Those last days
I visited with the proofs of your memoir –
from sent away to Wales to brought nameless back
to gas masks, boy chaperone to a wayward aunt
dancing with her beau (afterwards cake
in a Lyons).  ASM, you understudied in rep,
your triumph a walk-on lamplighter
who stole a laugh from nothing, which turned out
the story of your life.  You caught the sixties full-on
with the thinking man’s crumpet and your own show
at the RFH.  Your Barrow Poets’ single
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