Farewell, my friend

The world lost a treasure yesterday morning.

For those of us who were fortunate enough to know him, to hear his voice, to listen to his stories enveloped in that singularly unique baritone voice and to relish his wicked sense of humor, there will never be another like him.

Last year, after a concert, he was asked to read aloud a translation of a piece he didn't particularly like and he found the translation woefully inaccurate..so, instead of reading what was on the program, he pulled the following out of his pocket and read it aloud, unforgettably, to a hushed audience:

"Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay"

Godspeed, dear Roscoe.