The Ballad of the Hitch
We gather round to hear the tale
Of Christopher the wise:
The voice who drank and smoked a life
That others never tried.
This tale, far from infallible,
Still stirs the hearts and minds
Of audiences young and old:
Thinkers of every kind.
A Balliol, Oxford Socialist
(His curse – ‘Hitch-22’)
Bohemian? Contrarian?
No clumsy noun would do.
Young ‘Chris’ incited liberty,
A lefty, soapbox king.
Whilst ‘Christopher’ was off elsewhere,
And whisky was the thing.
His turbulent and vivid youth
Forged loves that would endure
Into an adulthood that knew
The dangers of the sure.
Regimes and officers of God
Began to draw his eye
As targets for the fighter’s fight,
As madness yet to die.
Our Hitchens stood for no man’s lies
And fought the gospel crew!
Anti-totalitarian,
A stalwart through and through.
The circles of his confidence
Were loyal and steeled as chains:
McEwan, Amis, Fenton and
Rushdie all but shared veins.
Despite his look of arrogance,
The Hitch was warm and true.
Our one lament can only be
That this was known to few.
For at the age of sixty-one
Our man received the News,
And sooner than be taken down,
Hit back with witty views.
Unshaken by the stare of night,
His nature held its course.
Writing to write; speaking to speak;
Bravery in discourse.
His critics cried of Heaven’s wrath,
And said, “His fate’s his due…”
But Hitchens told them, “Save your prayers!”
And furthermore, “Fuck you!”
In friendship, truth and irony
Our Hitchens held his heart;
A champion of the polemic;
A comrade born of Art.
Facing his death until the end,
The Hitch remained on form:
Debate and love - in synthesis -
Refusing to conform.
By his deathbed, the pen in hand,
Hitch still could not falter.
Carving out prose on Chesterton?
This man, no dark could alter.
His arguments and counter-strikes,
Consistent in their theme,
Stay stony in their eloquence.
No years may those demean.
So though our Hitch may lie interred
On medics’ icy slabs,
This hero’s name shall ever sing
Of wit and booze and fags.
His grave supplied the silence warned.
He tore at life ‘til night.
He burned the candle at both ends.
It gave a lovely light.
