How To Live Forever
HOW TO LIVE FOREVER
When you look into your daughter’s brown eyes
And see the eyes of your own mother long gone
But still smiling there, and understand that she
Too will hear something of you in her own son’s sighs;
When you pass a bearded hobo in a thunderstorm
Standing on the bridge and in a flash you see that the world
Is filled with such people, and that Christ himself
Also stood like that on the road to Jerusalem;
When you hear a nightingale and marvel as you realize
That all nightingales have sung the same song
From time immemorial;
Or see a butterfly and admire its colors just as
Roman soldiers did before battle for Rome’s fame;
And know that your daughter’s daughter will chase
Almost the same butterfly around some
Future garden, almost the same;
When time ceases to have meaning for you
Because you realize instinctively that you see and feel
All the same experiences people have always felt :
Then, with the universe you become one and true -
And you live forever.
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