A sentiment I share…
I didn’t know Mark Strand. I met him once when I was moonlighting at The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City. He was a formidable presence – tall, handsome, ramrod straight, modest, and quietly articulate.
The 80 year old former Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize Winner and Professor of English at Columbia University died last Saturday of liposarcoma, a rare soft tissue cancer.
The New Yorker obituary printed this Strand poem in its tribute:
2002
I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking of me.
He leans back in his chair, rubs his hands, strokes
His beard and says, “I’m thinking of Strand, I’m thinking
That one of these days I’ll be out back, swinging my scythe
Or holding my hourglass up to the moon, and Strand will appear
In a jacket and tie, and together under the boulevards’
Leafless trees we’ll stroll into the city of souls. And when
We get to the Great Piazza with its marble mansions, the crowd
That had been waiting there will welcome us with delirious cries,
And their tears, turned hard and cold as glass from having been
Held back so long, will fall, and clatter on the stones below.
O let it be soon. Let it be soon
It was too soon… Mark Strand R.I.P.
