A singer died
when he and I
were twenty five.
I think I found out
some weeks later,
playing his album to a friend.
"He's the one that died, isn't he?
Fell out a window?"

I was sorry
but unaffected.
I'd seen him on T.V.,
thought he sounded
a bit like me,
bought the CD.

Sixteen years on
I am pummelled with nostalgia
for a blithely immortal age.
My band broke up,
reformed, broke up,
I got married, had kids
became a teacher

But he sits
in the impregnable fortress of maybe,
always smiling,
twenty five
till the sun swallows the earth.