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Rod at
Dos Vidas. Photo by Thomas Kist from the 2006 Arjan Vlakveld film “Rod
McKuen: A Man Alone” for Netherlands Public Television. Photo ©2006,
2007 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives. All Rights Reserved.
A Thought for Today
What we carry to a book is every bit as important as what we take away from it.
FROM the¨BOOKS
THE TIME COMES
Finally the time comes. Irrevocably. Never
the same way twice. And the going isn't easy.
Each tries to make the other think the blame
Belongs exclusively to him. And so it does.
I hardly even tried, I'm past the point of that.
How could I presume to finalize
what maybe never should have been..
I started in not knowing who I am. When was it,
never mind. I dwell too much on me.
Still now we don't know one the other
and that's as good a way to end as start.
There is nothing you or I
or either one of us can say.
Beyond hello before goodbye there should be
a string of words or one long paragraph to make
the ending easy.
I am so amazed at finding out my head
still reels under even friendly blows
that I'm determined not to let the boxer
or the battler come in close again.
Nor will I willingly go out into the evening
any more and place myself within
that enchanted circle of the hunters.
The moving staircase or the rain..
I have so little permanency and not much
time left up ahead. I ought to stay at home
behind the iron gates and rainbow glass.
Sure places I've constructed.
It's quiet there and best of all
the disappointments yet to come can be
lived by me in private. No one need ever know
if the wounds are fatal or if I'm waiting out
some healing time.
There is an emptiness and it is deep.
A wound so old that healing wouldn't work.
If I have not yet come back around
to where I started then I am only inches
from that now narrow corridor
that will bring me there.
Relief I feel, I'll not deny it. But there's
a sorrow too as though the world was finally
slipping from me and away.
Perspective, I have none. Sorrow - there isn't any.
Plans? What plans could I have except to live here
for a time until I know it's finally time to go.
- from the third U.S. Edition of
"Moment To Moment", 1974
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