On Turning Sixty-One

Fitzgerald’s last line,
longing rendered in

fourteen words, ode to
inevitability uttered

in any tongue. “So we beat
on” aching,

“boats against the current”
our urgent

she bu de!, she bu de!/
I can’t bear

to let go!, “borne back”
by music

in the Latin,
de mihi tempus/

give me more
time, echoing

“ceaselessly
into the past.”