a Poem by poet Mark Wilson - a good friend of Robert: TIME-LAPSE i.m. RDC To dream of conversing forever in real coffee-houses, wearing our straw panamas steadies my troubled reflection. For Merrie Albion was our verdant demesne where we held synod, justly executed our Starry Chamber. Will Scarlet to your necker- chiefed Robin, who along with Jacques carried high our moveable fiefdom, our dynamic board for feasting. Six eyes undry from endless laughter. Was it the Round Table where we laid our artworks & amulets? Were they offertoriums to some higher power? We mounted for our grail-excursions: the Black, the Red & the Blue Knights. Later in the tiring-house where, angel- tireless, we metamorphosed into all cosmology’s personae. Performers to an empty auditorium, but were we too pre-lapsarian in our expectations? For the unfallen, these fallen guilds? Barabbas Disgust was sent packing to the hinterland with the rest of his Philistine horde; for those were days of a greater healing, before the golden- section of our imaginations were re- sectioned, lost all sense of proportion. And you became Legion containing multitudes, who pushed up a phantom hill your Sisyphean burden. You who were worn down mezzo del cammin; &, to lose you, that’s far too soon. Now I resemble nothing short of Old Scarlett, brandishing my spade with unsteady hands & with my lachrymose eye-sockets glistening. Maybe we were born out of zeitgeist: you & dear Jacques in your metaphysical float; & me: a time-lapsed man left standing.