Thursday, January 29, 2009

REQUIEM, by John Updike, RIP.

REQUIEM

By JOHN UPDIKE
Published: January 28, 2009, New York Times

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
— JOHN UPDIKE


This poem is taken from John Updike’s forthcoming collection, “Endpoint and Other Poems.”

Related John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class Man, Dies at 76 (January 28, 2009)

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