Tribute to Hans Garrett Blough | Axis Reflections |Axisoflogic.com

For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort; whatever goodness may surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly, the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn initiation, preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship with the fullest human lot, which, I think, no one who has tasted it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to know what the last parting is, seems needful to give the utmost sanctity of tenderness to our relations with each other.

- George Eliot

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Emily

I do not ask
the summer
Extraordinary gain
Nor do I beg the harvest
But modest share of grain

In spring the small wild flower
Seeks only to become
With sips of soil and water
A brief life in the sun

Can I expect more glory
How can I ask less pain than
Her - my wealthy sister
Bent over in the rain

When my wings are folded
And petals close in grief
When expectations fail me
And I lose all belief

Wild flowers yield a secret
'more life in fewer days'
Than we with all our wanting
Will find in all our ways

(A tribute to Emily Dickinson)

- Les Blough, 1987

Hans was a young man full of hope and promise when these photos were taken on the California coast while traveling north from Los Angeles to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he planned to begin his studies in September 1990. He lost his life in an accident in Boston on June 28 of that year. Today is the 20th anniversary of his death. At Brookline High School in Boston, high school seniors are given the opportunity to provide their favorite quotation beneath their photo in the high school annual (yearbook). Hans quoted Malcolm X, "No man gives up power willingly. It must be taken from him." His last significant act before his accident was to take his friends to the Esplanade in Boston to hear Mandela speak.

Photos of Hans Garrett Blough (January 1, 1972-June 28, 1990)

Garden Song

An early sun set in your eyes
A long low moon arose
To watch the places of your life
Where your movements, like vapors
Caress pathways left by words you spoke
Trellises laden with your smiles
Glistening in prisms of your tears
Shrouded in a late evening fog

We meet in this clockless garden
When the unneedled compass of my heart
Finds you waiting near the iron gate
Where guardian moonbeams anoint you
Spreading your scent, softening the darkness
That covered me upon your leaving
And I, awash in your lagoon, glisten
Midnight reflections in the only dance we know

~Les Blough, 1991