Pearse Hutchinson

On the locker-lid
a biscuit-wrapping
...............................torn,
waves in a sudden breeze
just like a flower.


Pearse Hutchinson
20/12/ 2011

This small poem was like a parting gift from Pearse. He was in good form that night: chatty, laughing, telling stories; very much himself and the way I’ll like to remember him. He was a great conversationalist, brilliant company. A superb story-teller with an amazing ability to remember actual dialogue from encounters years ago and the capacity to take numerous diversions in a story and still arrive back, no matter how much time had passed, to the precise point of departure.

In recent years, more or less house-bound and often very fragile-looking, he still somehow seemed indestructible. It was as though he was surviving on the energy he got from words. There were always new books, new poets, new words in a myriad of languages to explore, and so, in his room on Rathgar Road he kept travelling.

It was hard to realise this weekend that the travelling had stopped, and looking at his face, that he had moved out and there was no one there. He has left a gap that no one can fill.