Requiem–John Updike

REQUIEM

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

See also the discussion of Updike’s poem at the Immortal Muse blog.

John Updike: “Cosmic Gall”

 

COSMIC GALL

Neutrinos, they are very small. 
They have no charge and have no mass 
And do not interact at all. 
The earth is just a silly ball 
To them, through which they simply pass, 
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall 
Or photons through a sheet of glass. 
They snub the most exquisite gas, 
Ignore the most substantial wall, 
Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass, 
Insult the stallion in his stall, 
And scorning barriers of class, 
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall 
and painless guillotines, they fall 
Down through our heads into the grass. 
At night, they enter at Nepal 
and pierce the lover and his lass 
From underneath the bed-you call 
It wonderful; I call it crass.

–John Updike (b. 18 March 1932)

image: John Updike Dead at 76 by Wolf Gang