“If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me,
They bury me some place I don’t want to be,
You’ll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously,
Away from the swollen city-breeze, garbage bag trees,
Whispers of disease and the acts of enormity
And lower me slowly, sadly and properly
Get [Gordon Downie] to sing my eulogy,
At the hundredth meridian
At the hundredth meridian
At the hundredth meridian
Where the great plains begin”
—At The Hundredth Meridian, The Tragically Hip.
He doesn’t know a soul
There’s nowhere that he’s really been
But he won’t travel long alone
No, not in Fiddler’s Green
Beautiful. A sweet soul was silenced this year.