Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EVANESCENT, by MARVIN BARRETT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EVANESCENT, by                    
First Line: To die with the incontrovertible memory of something that will happen is
Last Line: The center that is I ... Was me.
Subject(s): Death; Old Age; Dead, The


To die with the incontrovertible memory of something that will happen is satisfying.
Die when you know it will come
and, coming, you can greet it and say goodbye.
That is the sensation worthy.
Today I die and it can go to the grave or the winds with me.
It can run down the earth cracks and soak the ground with me.
The earth can die with me today,
die in my memory.
The flash will come when it is a memory,
no longer a speculation
when it crosses the border and the world dies with me.
That is why I can die.

I die young.
I have known I should die young forever.
It was the one thing that kept me living.
The thought that all I was wouldn't sweeten into sickness made me be what I was,
made me live and almost crack the paper,
live and almost know reality.
I could feel reality sucking at my clothes, then my skin.
Now I am dying.

I am old.
The draught between life and reality is strong.
You can't stand long on the edge.
You must draw back or go over. I am going over.
It isn't a clinging fall, but slow, retarded, leisurely with the importance of minutes when hours
used to suffice.
I am telling you death now.
You can hear death from a young man who has the energy and the wisdom to tell you the truth.

A hybrid young man who has split his existence and approached his end from two directions.
That's me. And now I'm here.
The angle closes with one point left. Then I'll drop off like water an arrowhead and be gone.

But life is no arrowhead and death no drop of water into an ocean of infinity.
The act of dying,
the passing is the contact with reality.
Once over you are so immersed even reality takes on the aspect of life.
It's funny to see both ways from the center.
But that's what I am doing,
seeing both ways from the center.
The center that is I ... was Me.





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