I DON’T know how Rendra can “depart for ever more”, other than the fact that his body was buried on 7 August 2009, aged nearly 74. Rendra will never die: he has given us poetry.

Then I heard a voice
From behind that bush
As the red moon lurched through the sky
And a breeze blew from the south.

Poems like this (the English translations here are Harry Aveling’s) were written around half a century ago. But their simple, clear descriptio