The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is
baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who
died
suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care
so much about in intensive care:
it was once
weddings that came so thick and
fast, and
then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:
now, it's
this that and the other and somebody
else gone or
on the brink: well, we never
thought we
would live forever (although we did)
and now it
looks like we won't: some of us
are losing a
leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they
went downstairs for, some know that
a hired
watchful person is around, some like
to touch the
cane tip into something steady,
so nice: we
have already lost so many,
brushed the
loss of ourselves ourselves: our
address
books for so long a slow scramble now
are
palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our
index cards
for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens
drop clean away into sympathies:
at the same
time we are getting used to so
many
leaving, we are hanging on with a grip
to the ones
left: we are not giving up on the
congestive
heart failure or brain tumors, on
the nice old
men left in empty houses or on
the widows
who decide to travel a lot: we
think the
sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine
together and think of what used to
be: until we
die we will remember every
single
thing, recall every word, love every
loss: then
we will, as we must, leave it to
others to
love, love that can grow brighter
and deeper
till the very end, gaining strength
and getting
more precious all the way. . . .
A.R. Ammons,
Bosh and Flapdoodle (W. W. Norton & Co., 2005)
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