Van Wyck Brooks Poems | Examples

A Dirge For Old and Absent Friends

from:  "Dear Men and Women", by John Hall Wheelock:
(in memory of Van Wyck Brooks)
"...I have learned it from them at last, who am now grown old
A happy man, that the nature of things is tragic
And meaningful beyond words, that to have lived
Even if once only, once and no more,
Will have been -- oh, how truly -- worth it."

We, the aged, often have borne
that ultimate separation --
death; or, worse for some,
banishment to dementia
or to a dreaded exile
at any generic "home"
where visitors rarely enter
and hurry to depart.
Left with our diminished
dim impressions, we all --
confused -- recall old errant
conversation, guided gossip
in half-remembered settings
to which we surviving few
paid scant attention.  But now
those places, long abandoned,
all assume unmistakable
purpose:  marking for us
the decreasing distance
from our individual fated
final final destinations.