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# April/October
- URL: https://www.layersofzoe.net/april-october/
- Published: 2025-10-23T22:44:52.000Z
- Updated: 2025-12-08T21:56:42.000Z
- Author: Layers of Zoe
- Tags: In the Quiet, history, the men, the peninsula

f*or W.B., honoured on his birthday*  
23 October 2025

### I.

It was October, but they sang like April.  
Their voices wavered – age inside the strain.  
A red carnation pinned to each lapel.  
A fado, then a harvest song – off-plane.

Born under watch, he crossed a darker path –  
a child of islands, midnight, and escape.  
He did not beg to speak. He knew the part  
of one who learns which silences take shape.

A speech was made that smelled of ’seventy-four,  
the slogans dusted, proudly out of key.  
Then he rose – no flourish, nothing more,  
only what the future still might need to be.

I wept. The old applauded with their care.  
He named no foes. He only asked we care.

### II.

He held his ground. I thought it marked delay.  
Too calm, I said. Too slow to take a side.  
The truths he knew would not perform or sway,  
and did not ask for mine to coincide.

I spoke too much. I argued what I could.  
He listened, and returned no clear defence.  
He left the air intact, the posture good –  
as if restraint itself were eloquence.

He taught without correction, point, or claim.  
I entered ready to resist or teach.  
He made no case. He only said a name  
and let its weight go further than my reach.

I wept because he asked for nothing back.  
And now I see the things I used to lack.

### III.

I was not ready, but I heard him still.  
The room held something – gravity, or pace.  
No drama marked his tone. No sharpened will.  
Just care, composed and measured into place.

He asked for nothing. What he gave was whole –  
a hope without instruction, dim but sure.  
It made no sense. The moment simply turned –  
a steady, unprovoked, unbending cure.

He said a name. I almost missed its weight.  
It settled differently than I had guessed.  
No perfect line. No recompense. Just fate –  
the kind that leaves a question, not a crest.

He meant it all. The ground held, more or less.