The Last Pause Is The Longest

There are two kinds of silence in this world.
And no-one knew that better than Harold Pinter.
Beckett may have started it, but it was
Pinter who made the pregnant pause his own.
‘The Homecoming’ contains 224 of them.
‘The Caretaker’, by comparison, a mere 149.
I don’t owe it all to this son of a Jewish tailor,
but I certainly owe him a lion’s share.
I saw him that once in the flesh; leaving his seat
following the posthumous premiere
of my friend’s suicide-note of a stageplay.
He was taller than I’d pictured him.
With a stature befitting of a Nobel laureate.
The black cells were in his gullet even then;
steadily multiplying, though not yet diagnosed.
How I wish now that I'd asked to shake his hand.
Afterall, in the end it’s all about the ferret
under the cocktail cabinet. Or is it a weasel?
Blackout. Curtain. Applause.

Harold Pinter: official website