Joe Simpson

Joe Simpson was a man I scarcely knew.

I saw him when he came to see his father.

Our talks, if they were talks, were brief and few.

And yet I think I knew the man, or rather,

I knew something about him.  From his eyes

A certain light (though uncertain to me)

Seemed to precede him through the world of lies,

Flickering shadows where he could not see

What might await, what ecstasies of pain,

What narrow passages, where only faith,

That cannot know what it is faithful to,

Can find the right path to the gates of death,

A path he followed, and did not complain,

A path that might lead nowhere, as he knew.

Robert Mezey

From Collected Poems: 1952-1999, University of
Arkansas Press, © 2000.  Reprinted by permission
of the author.