As well as being a fine poet and devoted family man, David passed on his love of English literature to generations of students.
David will be very much missed by all of us at RWG but especially perhaps by the members of the poetry group. It was fitting, therefore, that a poem he inspired should be read out during his Requiem Mass at St Wilfrid’s RC Church.
David
You wrote of fragments,
‘a gesture from fragments’,
but as I remember you,
you came complete,
whole.
The entire of you would be
at my disposal
as you listened, reflected,
brought in your thought,
tempered and trained over time
and I would leave
fulfilled.
‘Sense and memory’
(you wrote of your wife Anne)
‘is shaped remarkably
into an accidental permanence’.
Most meetings are accidental,
not many achieve permanence
but, in your smile,
the profile of a crescent moon
illuminating transcendence,
arrived at permanence
in the minds of those of us
who became your friends.
Elizabeth Gibb
