How quick we move from labor nurses' hands,
wrapping us in a diaper, to taxidermists',
artfully arranging our limbs in the casket.....
What matters in this moment, this
one great blink of God's eye,*
is not what we own or've done
but the press of flesh upon our flesh;
the feeling; our Communion.

[by Edna St. Vincent Millay]*
When you are dead, and your disturbing eyes
No more as now their stormy lashes lift
To lance me through...as in the morning skies
One moment, plainly visible in a rift
Of cloud, two splendid planets may appear
And purely blaze, and are at once withdrawn,
What time the watcher in desire and fear
Leans From this chilly window in the dawn...
Shall I be free, shall I be once again
As others are, and count your loss no care?
Oh, never more, till my dissolving brain
Be powerless to evoke you out of air,
Remembered morning stars, more fiercely bright
Than all the Alphas of the actual night!

Marco!  One minute you seemed perfectly healthy,
the next you were sprawled on the floor by the drinking
    fountain
like a sack of potatoes.

(How reliable our machinery is usually--
just think if your car ran 60 years nonstop!....)

But, Marco, seeing you there on the floor,
I knew we live at the mercy
of neurons and corpuscles
(our own little wires and pistons)
and when they stop, we stop.

In youth, we knew great passion –
but tossed it aside,
thinking it easily found again.

In age, we understand --
great love is lightning in a bottle,
quicksilver, slipping through the hand....

It was cold.
Night.
January, I think.
I was wearing long underwear.
I went to the reservoir and played my recorder.
  
A hope I'd been hoping was done.
  
I played for the trees and the fish.
Quiet songs.
They eased my heart.

In youth, we knew great passion,
but tossed it aside,
thinking it easily found again.

In age, we understand:
great love is lightning in a bottle,
quicksilver slipping through the hand.

Do we ever really fall out of love?
No matter how badly the affair ended
some tender moment dominates the memory;
a high-water-mark of our feeling.

It's love's flood that we remember,
not low boredom, tedium, or anger.

I would have given you a perfect faith,
belief, unassailable and absolute;
joy's well-spring.
  
I offer only a substitute -- these poems,
disparate, contradictory,
tempered in truest love and despair.
Use them.

[by Edna St. Vincent Millay]*
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

[by Edna St. Vincent Millay]*
Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.