Life is full of all sorts of curses, pains and frustrations,
the worst are those we never hear or see until they’re gone
or we are, whichever comes first, such humiliations
sneak up in the darkness of our final hours and stone
us in public just as we thought it was time
to descend into the tomb and finally get some rest.
We parried the obvious calumnies in youth, scraped slime
and spit from our faces, burned documents and blest
our luck that no one plastered them in the press,
our foibles and sins forgotten, outlived our enemies,
then the last words we hear, almost whispered, squeeze
the body dry, twist the soul and put you to the test.
Should there be a little bell to ring out of the tomb
a signal, just in case, after our supposed demise,
to let them know up there that no one can assume
the end is really the end, and what we please
to call eternal sleep is something other,
a state of pure powerlessness and silent rage.
Will someone ever rescue us or smother
us, so that we never have to listen, age
after age, to these lies and allegations, suffer
every monstrous slander in silence—or worse,
feel their pity who condescend. What is rougher
than these infinite distortions? No curse
is strong enough to muffle them, to offer
the oblivion, the silence of rhyming verse.
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