Collected Poems, 1953-1993 by John Updike

Author:John Updike [Updike, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-96197-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

“It’s just the eye’s way of growing,”

my ophthalmologist euphemizes

of the lens’s slow stiffening

and irreversible presbyopia.

Skin goes keratinous,

the epiphyses of the long bones unite with the shaft,

and “linear growth comes to an end.”

Comes to an end!

Our aging’s a mystery, as is our sleep:

the protein codes, transactions more elaborate

than the accounts of a thousand dummy trusts,

have their smuggling secrets still.

The meanwhile, let us die

rejoicing,

as around us uncountable husks

are split and shed by the jungle push of green

and the swell of fresh bone

echoes the engendering tumescence.

Time’s line being a one-way street,

we must walk the tight rope or fly.

Growth is life’s lockstep;

we shall never again sit next to Peggy Lutz

in third grade, her breasts

a mere glint on the curve of her tomboy vigor

and our whiskery doom

within us of less dimension than a freckle.

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