Friends gone

Philip's slim half-forgotten hand-writing
And Donald courting death like a girl
And Tony when drunk finding God exciting
And Peter whose courtship was too successful

Falling down in a locket of fire;
And Kenneth with his sinister metaphysic;
Jack Gregory loving his gun and his beer
With one or two others out of the wreck
Fashioning some vivid life of their own.

Now what I remember, what runs quick
Round the heart is this much alone:
Some found that death was too lovely, or
Some were bent on trying to believe it so,
Some merely stayed away, uncalled for:
Their time was shortest, having nowhere to go.