Ray Bradbury (8/22/1920-6/5/2012)

Word comes that Ray Douglas Bradbury has gone West, peacefully, at age 91. He blended soaring imagination with exquisite prose to conjure worlds more wonderful than we could conceive without his help.

So many of us grew up partly in his worlds. On the veldt. At the dark carnival. Gazing at the fire. Hearing the sound of thunder. Contemplating the coming of soft rains. He was of the Golden Age and yet somehow apart from it. The other giants stood together; Bradbury stood alone in magnificent splendor. Something wondrous came this way and we shan't soon see it again. R.I.P.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-- Sara Teasdale

Tweet