The Atlantean Myth (Part III): Black Diamond's Tale

Black Diamond passed away in a February three years ago, aged 91. He was fading badly then, but his sharp journalistic wit and optic twinkle remained in flashes. He had been an able, crafty supporter of the Thunderer from the old days.

I remember writing this piece, which didn't see daylight. I remember thinking that nobody would remember him because he was the wrong kind of person for the wrong kind of age.

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This day we woke, missing his smile;
The flags - each pentagram of stars
Hollow, gutted of their fire -
Half-mast mourning for their sire.

This new country will miss his guile;
The mind aflame, the steel of Mars
Follow their lord to hallowed soil
Of country forged from his own toil.

The tributes fall, the long exile
Has come to him who fought our wars
And won for us, with word and pen,
The right to be his countrymen.

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Will anyone remember that he wrote our Pledge of Allegiance? Will anyone remember his brave and forceful speeches, his zesty cosmopolitanism, the fact that he (darkly agnostic to the end) married a Lutheran Magyar who taught English? He identified himself with the Descendants, and could easily have mixed with them on the strength of his urbane but fiery style.

It is impossible to tell his tale in full; the wounds are too raw, and yet long buried and forgotten. He was a very odd person, who somehow should never have been here, but was. And we should have been proud to have him, except that we weren't.