So glad to have known you my friend,
lived a piece of your life and art.
To my eyes a genius
unsung, penurious as the greats,
stone and oil
wood and wax, aflame
in your vision,
aloft with wings of canvas
marbled smoothly skyward
you drifted
studio to studio
fed the pigeons that strolled
your kitchen more at home than I,
biked the Hudson,
ferried Staten Island
for twenty years
handed off programs
at Avery Fischer Hall.
What became of your works?
I treasure the sheaf of photos you sent
images of your heart
and wild, wild soul
(your madness could be scary)
and the head of stone
you bequeathed me
broken from its body,
the very piece you struggled to hoist
up your west-
fifty-
fourth stoop
a winter day
in the past century --
something fluttered in my ribcage:
"Need a hand?"
How a life may bend on such a bone.
So glad to have known you,
crazy Portuguese francophone,
amazing carver and smoother of stone;
had I the means I'd have been the patron
you deserved,
could have saved your work and vision
but probably never
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