Tribute to Marilyn Buck (1947-2010) On November 13, 2010, a memorial meeting for Marilyn Buck, former political prisoner and poet, took place in the space that was once known as the "Audubon Ballroom," New York City.      By Marilyn Buck Moon Bereft Beyond razor wired walls the moon shimmers in the late summer sky spills over in pale brightness to draw me into its fullness washing my eyes in quicksilver   now, in a heavy-lidded cell moon bereft nights leave me weeping tears well up in dry cratered wounds despair rises dark and irradiated to swallow starlight and spit it out like steel needles that incite my loneliness   my soul careens off cell walls waits till pain tires and the pale moon of memory appears to call me home   July 1990   By Steve Bloom  Presente: Remembering Marilyn Buck   "A sadness too deep for words"        These are words I write down,      on the back of my program,      to describe the sadness I am feeling      a bit more than half-way      through the evening.   "In a heavy-lidded cell moon-bereft nights leave me weeping."        These are words Marilyn writes down,      in her poem, to describe the sadness      she is feeling one dark-of-July in 1990.      How many have had to explain the ways in which a choice to fight for justice leaves us weeping?        Yet those who live and love as      Marilyn Buck lived and loved know      there is a purgatory even worse      than this: that waterfall      of tears shed by all those      who choose not to fight.   "They call me an enemy of the state so I know I must be doing something right"        A choice, made once and      never questioned-not even      in the darkest of times.   If Giuseppi Verdi were alive, I think to myself, he might write an opera worthy of this libretto. For hours passed listening to one of his constitutes the sole experience I can think of comparable to what is happening to me now, here, this evening.        Still, let us remind ourselves,      only Marilyn Buck could      have written the life      which she has left to us.   After her release, those closely connected describe a woman intent on devouring everything in the final few weeks of life which she has left to her.        And so we comprehend: thirty years      behind prison bars could not devour      this living spirit. Chalk-up one more victory      for a living spirit over that which some      still have the arrogance to call "freedom."      She who believed in freedom      let her rest.   "They call me an enemy of the state so I know I must be doing something right"        And we know it too:      an entire ballroom-full      of people who, during      two and one-half hours      of tribute by her friends,      by her comrades, by her      family, reconfirm      the ways in which each      and every human      being becomes family      in the presence      of a living spirit.   Marilyn Buck—presente!   Marilyn Buck—presente!        Marilyn Buck—           siempre presente!     November, 2010