FOR BENJAMIN

 

There was no one quite like Benjamin

No one who can fill his shoes;

Which by the way were leather-free

In keeping with his views.

 

I heard that in the playground

By schoolmates left alone

He talked to cats he talked to bees

To join with Nature’s flow

 

It was the age of ignorance

By countless actions shown;

But he finessed the bitterness

Which could from that have grown

 

So when from school returning

‘Go home’ cried out some fool

‘That’s what I’m doing’ he replied

Disarmed him with his cool.

 

And when his young man’s world went wrong

He found a way to go

Which left those lesser ways behind

Through verse new worlds he’d know.

 

The quick wit and the energy,

The Caribbean cool

His ceaseless work and social grace

The rhymes that he renewed

 

Would bring him to the media world

To radio, book and film

He’d have to get a hotel suite

To pack the journos in.

 

Then when he met with Lady Di

And didn’t want to fart

In poetry he told the tale

Which made the country laugh

 

A national treasure he became

Except ‘The Sun’ was cross;

But in his rhyme ‘The Blinding Sun’

He showed them who was boss.

 

He lent me his celebrity

For the poet Shelley’s sake

Who he loved, in awe of how

He’d tried so hard to wake

 

The country from its slumber deep

And tell the skylark’s song;

Invoke in words the wild west wind

His inner fire lifelong.

 

And the first time he arrived

He’d just wowed them at Hay

The second time a hospital ward

Had been honored with his name

 

Then at Brookes when recognized

For making poetry real;

He asked me and my son along

To the celebration meal.

 

And in old Maxwell’s dining room

Vegan vichysoisse there served;

He just was so engaged with all

While I the guest observed

 

I got him on his mobile phone

The message left was cool:

‘You’ll find me in the local nick

In prison or in school’.

 

Now in ‘The Sun’ on this sad day

The tributes all flow fast;

The times have changed, his deeds have left

Their battles in the past.

 

So hail to thee blithe Benjamin

Hail to your mercury mind

Thanks for the way you worked for us

And always sought to find

 

A way to navigate dead ends

See injustices transformed

Hail to thee blithe Benjamin

May your spirit long go on.

 

 

 

 

(Reading the poem at the Oxford Poetry Circle's poetry fest at Oxford Festival of the Arts July 2025) 

 

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