Sir.

He would stand up as we came in, and go out; but for a second he was there, darkly well dressed, with a haggard beard and shaking hands, against fluttering yellow curtains. Was yellow his choice?
The curtains were always clean, his table orderly, except for Paperwork, which we imagined lurked, hammer in hand, outside his corner office like a ham-handed student.
"Go deeper."
The ham-handed student was terrified of asking him anything, hoping the situation would show her kindness, and he fobbed off all who came to his door, fearing it was Paperwork.
He was sad, later, when he found out it had been people, with questions.
Because he cared, do you know? I cannot guarantee it is not nostalgia—
what is a guarantee in any case? It is a speech act.

He held death at bay with a shaky hand. Illness and solitude he carried
resignedly, and more or less erect. Literature he coaxed to his side from years of devotion,
An old retainer in a shadowy house, warily waiting
The air about him thick with reading, measuring out lengths of poetry
like smoke, immeasurable, savoured.

Where did he go? Into a storm-night, into a rickety car, into a silence
Looking inward, his eyes glittering black and his lips dry?
He caressed space and waved aside time, he wove maps (warp and weft) and
scorned summary.
We did not understand then, and the ragged facts
haunting his death—pain and desolation—we will not now read out as his life.
What he meant, we do not know, (which sometimes made us mad)
But it was bona fide poetry, and worth the care.