the last hot time

After creation, long silence, no single word
to mark a thought or pin down a sense;
nothing to indicate what was once absurd,
nothing to puncture dishonesty and pretence.
He told the truth by making up bright lies,
he educated by sheer linguistic power,
his words rise up, it seems, above these skies
and last, we thank the gods, beyond this hour.
When he made stories, novels, complex verse,
we knew the presence of a noble mind;
never offensive, though sometimes quite terse,
yet believing in the best of human kind.
Too short his working life beneath our sun
but bright the vision his imagining won.