00:00The Patriarchs, an elegy.
00:04The weather in the window this morning is snow,
00:09unseasonal singular flakes, a slow winter's final shiver.
00:14On such an occasion, to presume to eulogise one man
00:18is to pipe up for a whole generation,
00:22that crew whose survival was always the stuff of minor miracle,
00:27who came ashore in orange-crate coracles,
00:31fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at sea
00:35with flaming decoy boats and sidestepped torpedoes.
00:41Husbands to duty, they unrolled their plans
00:45across billiard tables and vehicle bonnets, regrouped at breakfast.
00:51What their secrets were, was everyone's guests and nobody's business.
00:56Great-grandfathers from birth,
00:58in time they became both inner core and outer case
01:03in a family heirloom of nesting dolls.
01:07Like evidence of early man,
01:09their boot prints stand in the hardened earth
01:12of rose beds and borders.
01:16They were sons of a zodiac out of sync with the solar year,
01:20but turned their minds to the day's big science and heavy questions.
01:26To study their hands at rest
01:28was to picture maps showing hatched valleys and indigo streams,
01:34schemes of old campaigns and reconnaissance missions.
01:38Last of the great avuncular magicians,
01:41they kept their best tricks for the grand finale,
01:45disproving immortality and disappearing entirely.
01:51Major oaks in the woods start tuning up
01:54and skies to come will deliver their tributes.
01:58But for now, a cold April's closing moments
02:02parachute slowly home,
02:05so by mid-afternoon,
02:07snow is recast as seed heads and thistle-down.
02:11...
02:14...
02:15You
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