A eulogy delivered by Michael Weiss in the San Jose Mercury News, April 13, 1997:

Awhile later, with the sky outside the plate glass window turning murky with light, I felt somebody touch my thigh. Allen was sitting beside me and when I looked down I saw his hand resting there. He squeezed.

I thought: One of the great poets of the century is making a pass at me. And it has to be a man! And then I thought that this man was 20 years older than I was, he had been drinking and doping and laughing and shouting and making great ribald sense all night through; his lover was here; he had tried to seduce Andy; and now he was going to settle for me.

My head was drooping with tiredness and he was going strong. It taught me something about the vast energy that underlies the creative urge in a genius like Allen Ginsberg, the unlimited appetites, to contempt for the barriers that keep the rest of us penned in.

This week thinking about Allen Ginsberg and old idea made sense anew: The world is a smaller place when a great man dies. He breathed life and yearning into all he touched.

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