Requiem
Why is there so much despondency with old age? An urge to go back in time and edit one's decisions? A feeling of lack of appreciation? Of irrelevance? Or the increasing physical constraints of age?
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.
From: Endpoint and Other Poems by John Updike