So we must say Goodbye, my darling, And go, as lovers go, for ever; Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels And make an end of lying down together. - Alun Lewis

It is only when death releases the true poet from the embarrassing condition of being at once immortal and alive in the flesh that the people are prepared to honour him; and his spirit as it passes is saluted by a spontaneous display of public emotion. This explains the heavy black headlines in the Press of March 1944: ALUN LEWIS THE POET IS DEAD. Search the back-files and you will find no preparatory announcement: ALUN LEWIS WRITES GREAT POETRY.

I am more and more engrossed with the single poetic theme of Life and Death, for there doesn't seem to be any question more directly relevant than this one of what survives of all the beloved.

All this slowness, all this hardness,
The nearness that is waiting in my bed,
The gradual self-effacement of the dead.