To My Friend On His Deathbed
Or, Maybe You Won’t Go?
There is nothing I can do that will be any good
Nothing I can try that could save you
No herbal concoction, no medicine food
Everything stronger they already gave you
Is there time left anon a new habit to learn?
Maybe, but not its proper effect ascertain
Our time finds, invested, a decreasing return
All costs presently sunk, with no successes to claim
Yet so much of our time is, well, mundane
with the details of our little lives quite consumed
but — an imperative added to not be all in vain
that no one here can fulfill, since we are all of us doomed.
this verse was meant to somehow banish our grief & fear & sad regret:;
if as i suspect this goal remains elusive, perhaps we’ll get there yet.
