Ancient Advice

We begin here the fourth book,

On Losing What You Have Gained.

This is its opening verse—

Lives all do this, different ways.

Some fall apart all at once.

Some disintegrate decades.

Those early books were about

Acquisition as much as

Survival, becoming more

Each year than the year before,

Growing up, into yourself,

What will you do with your life?

This last book’s all divestments,

Excruciatingly slow

Or devastatingly swift.

What have done with your life?

Everyone’s done nothing much,

But competition demands

Comparison; good enough

Needs to know what was better,

What could have been best of all.

Best of all is letting go

Of worrying what you’ve done

Compared to everyone else,

But that’s hard in hospital,

That’s hard in a prison cell.

It’s amazing how you cling

To the most tormenting thing

While the rest of you drops off,

Ignoring your decisions.

Do you think how you’ll be viewed

Will matter to you, after?

Do you think you will be seen

As you wish, as you expect,

As if you’d controlled you, or

At all? The biographers

May come for you with their notes

And survivor interviews

To make careers from your life,

If you were famous enough

Or unusual enough,

But biographers are few.

You’re just the shape of your wave,

A softly swelling bell curve

Or a torn-up, foam-flecked crest.

Now, savor your subsidence.

Every bit of you will be

A bit of something else soon,

And you won’t have to worry

What sort of a wave you made

In the evening’s shorelessness.