Oh where in heaven’s Ernie Wise?!
Where’s the straight man’s enterprise?
Must it die when the funny man dies
and climbs to Blessed Mary?
O, where in heaven’s ‘Little Ern’?
Surely for Eric he must yearn,
if only for one final turn
on legs ‘short, fat and hairy’.

Whether at hand at Eric’s ops
or with Eric’s hands upon his chops,
he was one of Eric’s props
but never therefore sorry
and now ‘The Tall One’ ’s standing by
for that Great Star Turn in the Sky
which waits for all from French and Fry
to Smith and Jones and Laurie.

Tommy Cooper’s eloquence
already warms an audience
of angeline omniscience
and chuckling cherub crowds.
He sweats beneath his famous hat
and says, “God’s got a Laundromat!
It turned my fez white, jusslikethat!”
and laughter climbs the clouds.

Eric, looking down from there,
thinks he might see Ern somewhere
and wonders if that join of hair
refuses still to show,
or if a crack in Ernie’s heart
still weeps for how they had to part
and thus, before too long, will start
its journey from below.

But Ernie Wise, like everyone
under the warm, sweet, mortal sun,
sprints through the only known race run
until the last sunset.
For life is so seductive still:
it quickens us with its playbill,
its live act and its vaudeville.
The show must go on yet.

Meanwhile, on high, the patriarchs,
bewingéd Askey, Trinder, Marx,
enough to fill a dozen arks,
line up to take their fill,
and Eric waits there, half in hell,
but when in mirth the heavens yell,
“Just follow that!” he knows full well,
when Ern turns up, he will.