Poem o' the Day

In honor of National Poetry Month, I shall post one poem daily. Let's warm up by beginning with something short:

All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone;
We must speak of other matters:
You can be me when I'm gone.

-Neil Gaiman, from The Kindly Ones

If I remember rightly, this beautiful and profound piece, so poignant in the story, came about because Neil, when leaving a convention, slapped his name tag on someone and said, "Here, you can be me when I'm gone." Something like that, anyway. I love the way he can turn whimsy into something deeply meaningful, and sometimes the other way round.