Stephen Oliver pays tribute to Warren Dibble

RENDEZVOUS

for Warren Dibble

You gave me back my words. A reminder.

Your voice I knew immediately. My words gave me

pause, half recalled, how could it be otherwise?

I heard them in a different register,

as if for the first time, remade. They had all gathered,

those words, in spontaneous,

mass demonstration, shoulder-to-shoulder,

to make a rendezvous. Whether this was expectation or

conclusion, greeting, or decisive farewell,

in a town square, down highway, for one moment,

I could not tell, those words, disowned, independent.

Given back to me within the single minded

character of your voice, tremulous, through the cable

beneath the Tasman Sea.

The phone call reversed its charge and two poems

informed me newly. Then you hung up.

Nothing more needed saying. A gift.

Stephen Oliver

“Warren Dibble 1931-2014—playwright, poet, Burns Fellow, University of Otago 1969—lived in Sydney for over four decades. Warren removed himself from the literary circus years ago. Comfortably into his early 80s, he continued to write but did not publish. Warren was one of the wittiest men I had ever met. His poetry and other writings are as good as any writer who has achieved genuine acclaim in NZ letters, past or present. Vale”