Volume 21 Number 1 Page 11

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A Poet passes-Photo of Francis Brabazon and sheet music

Francis Brabazon

1907-1984

As Dust He Sings for Francis

The wordsmith has died,

gone to the silence he loved —

there where his words

could not take him.

He said to me once that poetry

should exalt the Beloved,

that the business of the poet

is to sing God's glory,

to reflect, however little,

the sonority of silence.

I think of him then, the singer

short and intense, a lover

grafted to clarity's fire.

His pen was a voice singing

of life's shadow play

veiling the Beloved's light,

and of the job of the lover

to fashion his heart as a chalice,

wherein he might consume himself

utterly in burning.

Now he, the Hafiz of our times,

still has not ended his passionate

poems to the sweetness of Meher;

he remains in the world as a song,

as the essence of dust he is singing

— Robert Dreyfus

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