Epitaph
He insisted on placing an epitaph on his ashes
Who could deny him this expectation
While he still lived
Afterwards is a different matter
He disliked the cold the heat as well
There were few places he could live
No matter he said because wherever he was
He was elsewhere all the same
He loved poetry
But grew impatient with his contemporaries
His complaint: they didn't write about anything
By which he meant anything that mattered
This was symptomatic of his austerity
He desired little for himself
Even companionship except for children
He would have been happy to be one of them
In many respects old-fashioned
Just now in error (?) he wrote old-vanished
Yet prided himself on what he termed his anarchism
His long-standing unadorned and thorough radicalism
Having lived alongside a plethora of American wars
Spain Korea Vietnam Iraq Greenland? France?
Couldn't remember but knew that all wars are lost
Only the dead survive the living are forgotten
And of the epitaph was there nothing to tell
And about whom to tell it The man he is
Not the man he was even his childhood unlike him
So in the end he wrote Anon and then anon
12/5, 12/9/04, 1/5-1/6/05
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.
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