Sweet Nick Poem by Frank Bana

Sweet Nicholas, your handfuls of song
Endure and echo in the thoughts of some
Who look to deeper lives once more, in England and beyond

The damp tones of voice strewn on guitar, the steady pick
And falling strain, are clear as rain upon hard trodden ground
And grow more sturdy through the fallen years

Your generation lost in the abandonment of dreams,
Its hope and thirst for dreaming both erased
By monstrous waves of violence, foregone the force

Of persistence born in calm. Still, you watch and wait
For Betty at the riverbank. Your burial field
Is tilled and sown by seeds you left for her to find.

Half-boyish demi-smile, long slender hair
And frame, by Hampstead and Cyrano's coffee bar.
Near to invisible in the air, you hold to youth with fingers fine.

That blue guitar is strung across a pink-edged moon
Your life a gift extreme, a quietude of love
And fragile voices heard much further, later, now.


Nick Drake,1948 - 1974