We’ve Come to Expect
—an excerpt
Let’s remember not only the local wars
over claims but a late conflict of siblings
in aristocracy and the stock market,
………….. sharing destruction.
Or recollect the brothers who stayed back east
laboring in the shoe factory, or their
bosses who summered hunting in Scotland and
………….. reside forever
in the protestant cemetery at Rome
among cats, the pyramid of Cestius,
and Keats’s grave. What use are those forefathers
…………..to our condition?
We want comfort: . . .
…………..…………..~~~~
…………..Or say: We’re sixty
…………..years old we know better
…………..and do less. Things we
…………..know better are antinomian
…………..adventure, sequent despair,
…………..error, self-deception, failure,
…………..and good cheer. No wonder
…………..that we’d prefer, with
…………..the dying Irish poet, to
…………..be “young” and “ignorant.”
by Donald Hall
from The Museum of Clear Ideas
Ticknor and Fields 1993