A Final Sonnet

May 2, 2007 at 6:41 AM
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How strange to be gone in a minute! A man

Signs a shovel and so he digs Everything

Turns into writing a name for a day

Someone

is having a birthday and someone is getting

married and someone is telling a joke my dream

a white tree I dream of the code of the west

But this rough magic I here abjure and

When I have required some heavenly music which even now

I do to work mine end upon their senses

That this aery charm is for I'll break

My staff bury it certain fathoms in the earth

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I'll drown my book

It is 5:15 a.m. Dear Chris, hello.

--Ted Berrigan

*Photo from Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/ceheginero/

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nice choice of image and poem. The poem reminds me of something Proust wrote in an essay that he wrote before writing novels, called "Against Sainte-Beuve" - he notes how when people think about death, they think of it as an event vaguely removed from the ordinary stream of life, as though it will happen in a moment that will be totally consacrated to one's death. Proust argues that death ignores such schedules and separations -- it happens in a moment that a person had intended to spend doing something else, like eating lunch, or hanging out in a park, or taking a walk. Ugh, this is morbid! Anyways, it seems like this poet is imagining this simultaneity and suddenness of life, death, and all events and states.

A Final Sonnet

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