Nature and history have made us
what we are, fat hapless amateurs
stranded some ninety million miles
from the nearest star,
and if I can be candid,
as I always try to be
with those I love,
we will be the subjects of
neither biopics, nor documentaries,
nor panel presentations, nor think-pieces,
nor op-eds, nor elegies
after we’ve finally joined
the generations
and done what all poets do,
namely to find
oblivion mostly kind,
at least compared with being
as we knew it, which
to be fair to being,
we hardly knew
and never learned to do it
well enough to start seeing
the truth behind
all those axioms, old friend,
about what counts in the end.
—Matthew Buckley Smith
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