Published in Overland Issue 21 Winter 1961 · Poetry October Francis Geyer In Memoriam Istvan FarkasCompanion, come at lastTo our last hour, we shareNo pain, my sorrow’s past.I dance on light and wearLight’s dazzle in my breast.My dear companion, rest,I leave you now to severMemory and hope forever.“I brought you through unendingWhirlpools of hidden loveSafe, and I bore the rendingTalons of pain, and stroveAll night with faceless fearsFor your sake, and my tearsWere salt, salt, for your sake.It is I whom you forsake.”Companion, tool put byAs useless now, I stareThrough light, superb of eyeAnd weightless rest on air.What arrow is it finds me?What is the weight that binds me?O plumed with pain I fall,Companion, to your call.“I sing the nosegay hours.My father’s hand in mine.The secret speech of flowers(Such fragments heard!) A pineFingers the silks of cloud.White heron on the loudWinds across Alfold come.Syllables like a drum.”Companion, wanderingWith childhood’s quickening tongue,Once, saying was the thing-N ow world and word are sprungApart-“I see once moreBalaton’s level shore.Father, I see the whiteHeron dissolve in light.”I’ll wear no mortal dress.Why should the spirit kneel?“Alfold, horizonless,Your galloping herdsmen wheel.O childhood lost and found!My human wheat is groundTo the wafer of this pain.O unhorizoned plain!“In fallen blood I lie.I dream, I shall not wake.Though men and cities dieBurning for freedom’s sake,Yet each man dies alone.”Look, the white her-on’s goneSoaring, and does not grieve,And hope and freedom live Francis Geyer More by Francis Geyer › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 27 September 20244 October 2024 · Poetry Because a wind blazes Dženana Vucic Because after autumn there are / other autumns, / we learn to eat the wind. / This is what we shall do / with all our anger. 6 September 20246 September 2024 · Poetry Debts of the robots Corey Wakeling Repaying the debts of robots, / I see me in your screen fatally, which is / to say oozed certainty across a whistle of craft.