Continuing to live -- that is, repeatA habit formed to get necessaries --
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.
This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise --
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it's chess.
And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.
And what's the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,
On that green evening when our death
begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
... Philip Larkin (1922-85), English poet
Life is an immobile, locked,
ReplyDeleteThree-handed struggle between
Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse)
The unbeatable slow machine
That brings what you'll get.
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
ReplyDeleteWaking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
“
Being brave
ReplyDeleteLets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Someone who was someone
ReplyDeleteWho is noone
Is known
As noone who was someone.
The knowing is all-
and signifies nothing,
For noone knows noone.
As you are, I was.
ReplyDeleteAs you will be, I am.