I just came across this poem in the current issue of The New Yorker, and just love it. It is so eloquently sad and moving.
from Leçons De Ténèbres:
‘But are they lessons, all these things I learn
Through being so far gone in my decline?’
‘…I should have been more kind. It is my fate
To find this out, but find it out too late.’
‘… But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air
As if there were not much more of it there
And write these poems, which are funeral songs
That have been taught to me by vanished time:
Not only to enumerate my wrongs
But to pay homage to the late sublime
That comes with seeing how the years have brought
A fitting end, if not the one I sought.’
Clive James
