Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye
and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.
Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
"He was of such a type and intelligence," no more.
Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore
the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.
Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.
Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,
not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
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Comments
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Salute from a contemporary
In nineteen forty-four, you climbed from your tank
and met that lethal mortar
while I, some thousand miles further north,
slowly, coldly sank,
living, silent, struggling, down through
the neutral Arctic water,
the aeroplane quietly and humbly collapsing around me.
Contemporaries then in our twenties: we lived, you died.
But the simple facts for survivors
are no simplification here for you.
For you are still there.
You live — trapped in your life like me in my plane.
You did not pass;
it's we who continued and left you behind. You stopped,
touched your temporal limit
and then withdrew as you, like the rest of us,
simply must,
into your own share of space-time
that is your medium,
your definition — your young whole life.
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Salute from a contemporary
From guest Malcolm Piercy (contact)
In nineteen forty-four, you climbed from your tank and met that lethal mortar while I, a thousand miles further north, slowly, coldly sank, living, silent, struggling down through the neutral Arctic water, the aeroplane quietly and humbly collapsing around me. Contemporaries then in our twenties: we lived, you died. But the simple facts for survivors are no simplification here for you. For you are still there. You live — trapped in your life like me in my plane. You did not pass: it’s we who continued and left you behind. You stopped, touched your temporal limit and then withdrew as you, like the rest of us, simply must, into that amplitude of space-time that is your medium, your definition — your young whole life. -
This poem was read out today 10th July 2005, in London at the celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of second world war. This poet lived then and died then like many other very young men. Never simplify them, remember them.
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Not Crazy, but beautiful and scary - he was so young and had to think of death as imminent. Brave I say.
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crazy
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