The obituary notice of Nina FORTUNE

Once upon a lifetime ago when I was young, unformed and heavy with the promise of things to come, I dreamt of someone who would enter my life to save me from boredom and who would enlighten me. One day a door swung open into space and there stood Nina Fortune.The light shone from her eyes and her name was the coolest that I had ever heard. She welcomed me and invited me to join her and her fellow travellers on their quest to create a new and wonderful world. A world filled with colour, light, music, beauty and art. I became a planet in her orbit. She taught me so much and helped me to remember all the things that I thought that I had forgotten. I could say so much more about this beautiful spirit, but for right here and right now, this is enough.

Nina, you will always be in my heart and my head for everything that you gave me. And what more could a poor boy want? Bless you and thank you my Pop Art, Aquarian Muse.Your colours will shine bright forever.

Nina

In the gaping midnight a star lies broken.
All passion was here, agony and laughter,
insightful reflection on the cosmos and the innermost heart and mind,
all wrath and tenderness, all courage, confusion and clarity, all merriment
poured into this tremulous vase, this shell, ebbing its last in a little bed,
unquiet in a silent ward, in pieces not unloved.

She has already shot her spirit homewards through the heavens,
while, sunny echoes of Bloomsbury and Kew, rusty coppers and purples,
art and science, intelligent music and cinema, art-deco cafeterias,
crackling firelight and close-cropped topiary
all float into a psychedelic sunset.

Transit of Venus

Inside the bluebird biscuit-tin
there are letters tied with ribbon
and a pair of minnie-mouse shoes.

She had stared into the abyss
(in electrode summers long ago)
and found much to commend it.

For she was alien fruit,
starspawned with the scent of roses.
Not of this world,
but gone too soon to the hereafter.

She has not gone,
She has not passed away,
she who was larger than life
just outgrew it.

Nina

In the gaping midnight a star lies broken.
All passion was here, agony and laughter,
insightful reflection on the cosmos and the innermost heart and mind,
all wrath and tenderness, all courage, confusion and clarity, all merriment
poured into this tremulous vase, this shell, ebbing its last in a little bed,
unquiet in a silent ward, in pieces not unloved.

She has already shot her spirit homewards through the heavens,
while, sunny echoes of Bloomsbury and Kew, rusty coppers and purples,
art and science, intelligent music and cinema, art-deco cafeterias,
crackling firelight and close-cropped topiary
all float into a psychedelic sunset.

Transit of Venus

Inside the bluebird biscuit-tin
there are letters tied with ribbon
and a pair of minnie-mouse shoes.

She had stared into the abyss
(in electrode summers long ago)
and found much to commend it.

For she was alien fruit,
starspawned with the scent of roses.
Not of this world,
but gone too soon to the hereafter.

She has not gone,
She has not passed away,
she who was larger than life
just outgrew it.