Friday Poem: "To Have Lived This Long"

            To Have Lived This Long

To have lived this long in admiration of children authors of the book of
     laughter cartographers of the map of solutions whose commentary can
     always be trusted
To have lived this long in fealty to women without understanding them yet
      knowing their value as they melt or harden with the changing seasons
To have lived this long scowling at the genuflectors the cringers the
     clingers the gossips especially the barren patriots
To have lived this long among these barbarians even perhaps to have
      supported them by inaction to have tutted and tsked but not to have
      risked my body
To have lived this long clinging to this fractured bone yard into which I
     mumble even to think it worthy to lave it stuff it wrap it in cloth guard
     it from its just deserts
To have lived this long disguised as human as man as poet as comrade as
     lover as culture-carrier all these but masks of my strident my querulous
     mortality
To have lived this long tried by the body's ailments the mind's enigmas
     squirreled beneath shame's bravado the vulnerability of this sack of
     sorrow that bears my name
To have lived this long vain as any carrion humbled yet arrogant stumbling
     yet upright doomed yet in denial sitting here near noon forgetful of
     food of water of tasks of trials dumbly tapping out a poem:
     madness  ecstasy affluence

12/21/04, 12/30/04, 1/6/05, 10/7/07, 1/20/08, 1/24/08

Copyright 2004, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.