My own songs awaked from that hour our families were very close You know his voice but you think of him saying other people’s words and you think of pronunciation when words are words. I have kept embers of that time Have asked the wind to blow on them. Not in Wellington. Surprise, his eyebrows almost shot out of his head to find me with my own beard. I was a child who said surprising things which he saw through. Perhaps the wind will not come, the voice is gone. I was not so golden in his regard. He laughed. Had a pipe. The time, the Whole Earth Catalogue and Little Red Schoolbook, of cultural answers to political questions, was rather beginning than drawing to a close. And the pipe had to go. Not the pipes. But certain words. Socialism. Egalitarian society. Socialist utopia. I heard him say too soon to say in the brief gold sunrise before, presage to the coming age, when If we speak kiwi, if we do, then, she’ll be right. But I would stay up precociously late to hear, bear out the heaviness, of any argument again, about the human element, its burden to government, when we cast our vote by machine, when we do. Again have my first glass of cherry brandy, hear on your headphones Switched-On Bach and and hear, His mind is blowing! Who is here to see through me if I should presume to say he was an actor unlike any other I knew and how he was, he was my father’s friend, how like no other, again, you hear the voice and not the words, what are words? not the song, and if I pronounce he spoke with his fragility and his intelligence, how should I presume? without gesture, without face, with the presence of his body. Seat, self- aware, and self directed, as my father knew, knew him, vulnerable seat, of his working mind. His angles graceful elegant songs. A photo of him like this, in State of the Play resting his elbows, on the side of the stage, the classroom. So the older writer I knew him as, awaked my own songs at that hour. With an irony hurt by its own distance by laughter overcoming it. And I have at home A Choice of Whitman’s Verse, ten years after their wedding, I remember. That day, Farm Road. And in it, written in the front cover, is Simon. and a choice for a young poet, with regards from Peter & Sue V.J, christmas 1980. I don’t know how they thought of me. Did they consider the first line for Peter of this song would be from there? Consider at that time I was reading Jean-Paul Sartre, I awaked precociously late with only embers, hoping for the wind which changes direction frequently on these islands, to the hour of the gifts they gave, in that generous brief and golden sunrise. That I was not golden in his regard. You see how he saw through me? to my youth, a child of Whitman’s who stayed young for you and sings and shares, with that poet forever youthful, his birthday. At Rotoiti, we liked to pronounce it, aping the accent of the well-to-dos, as leak, Another photo. This time, taken by Peter. I am on the jetty. My younger brother is there beside me. News of his birth came when I was in the bath at Peter and Sue’s. My parents’ game, If you had other parents who would they be? So there I was. In Peter’s black-and-white photo I had freckles, a soft brim hat, old clothes, a trenchcoat and belt, gumboots. With perhaps no intelligence at all, but thoughtful, and no intelligence of what, I am looking into the grain of the photo, the water and the mist, it is agreed that it is of Christopher Robin, so it is. So it is Christopher Robin who says, Goodbye, Peter. [for Peter Vere-Jones, 21 October 1939 – 26 January 2021, by Simon Taylor, 14 February 2021]