In This Life [for Edwin Morgan] Poem by Sally Evans

If you were lucky enough to keep on writing
and publish poems over decades,
I heard you say that in the end
they'd start to ask you in,

to where we ultimately hold your books,
turn the big pages of A Second Life,
unpuzzle I am Rife in Zion
or take on an alternative religion.

Others will catch these leaching tales
not of obstreperousness or bravado,
but standing on a pavement with your wineglass -
a fire alarm in the middle of a dinner,

a dinner at which you were to be awarded
a joint share in a literary prize,
telling the radio reporter. 'You never know
in this life what will happen next.'

Did 'this life' mean Scotland or poetry?
Gilgamesh, time capsules, a library?
In the mind, such quiet remarks
can shed long screeds of meaning.

We, others, you. The personal pronouns
shift, mill among detailed memories.
These are the readers equal to your work.
It is a game for society.
Eddie @ ninety, Scottish Poetry Library