I hope not to see anyone I know
As I read the obituaries.
Recognition is far too cruel a fate
Even for someone I never liked.

I look at lives well-lived and lives ...lived,
Grainy faces over the“bits” in the obits,
As though a bit of each life touches me
In the newsprint on my fingers.

Each life sounds remarkable when
Recounted and retold by loved ones
The way Lane said, “He used to be a big shot,”
As Cagney’s life ended in “The Roaring Twenties”.

Do they now know something that I don’t?
Have they wiped this world’s mud on a new welcome mat?
Found any kind of promise at the end of the rainbow;
“You have my word, son, I’ll never do it again,”?

Do we cling to a spark, a “bit” of the divine
More remote than an abandoned cabin with a dry well?
Did we first lift our heads to look up
Or to roar and raise an animal bone club instead?

Did Kurtz whisper, “The horror, the horror,”
Because he found the answer to that question?
Or because he saw that Thrasymachos’s concept of justice
Held true even in the next life?

Any answer might elicit Kurtz’s reaction
Depending how one has lived one’s life.
We all find a cure for insomnia eventually,
So be careful what you read.