Day 11: The future in a cemetery

Challenge 11: “A poem that addresses the future.”

Dressing the future

My future?
That’s an easy one.

I die.
We all die.

It’s so certain
that there’s no need for Future
or Future Perfect Tense.

I die.

First, the perfect present
continues
– “I have been living” –
and then
the future becomes perfectly tense.

Until it’s a wrap.

But before that
I’m bound to suffer
at least a bit.
So far I haven’t done much suffering.

My body will grow things.
My teeth will depart.
It has started.

The process is Irreversible
and is as ugly as that film.

The only way to survive it
is by viewing it backwards.

The Others discover empty houses
and move in by force.

People separate into two groups:
legal and illegal.

Water runs out. Desert wins.

But first?
People close to me die.
Starting with dog.

Before all that
I intend to
not publish a few more books,
not call some people
and not read everything,
watch everything
and visit everything
from my three lists.

I do plan to write some more poems though.
At least twenty
minus one.

You know what?
Life moves in the right direction.
I’m okay with going out like that.
I bet I’ll be pretty tired by then.

Here are some more people who got tired and won epitaphs. Location: Non-Catholic cemetery in Rome, where death has a future.

Bilingual text mentions “sweet dreams of love”, “life of angels” and “beloved in marble”.

“Commit thy way to the Lord.”

“If a person enters into our lives even if only for thirty seconds we owe them respect because they come from God.”

A daughter of a princess lies here.

“The little giant” behind, a violin lover in front.

On Her Majesty’s secret service?

“It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

“He the best and he the noblest, he so gentle and so kind” And his beloved and faithful wife rests near him. And they read a lot.

“Here the dreamers sleep.”

“Verily, we belong to God and verily, unto him we shall return.”

The memorial to John Keats with an acrostic ending with “Not honoured less for Epitaph so meek!” His grave is just opposite.

The grave of Percy Bysshe Shelley upon drowning somewhere close to me. The lines are from The Tempest: “Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange.”

I don’t know him but his grave is pretty and the message even more so, paraphrased: Let’s not grieve for having lost but rejoice for having had.

For Christina, “who so loved this place.” She was an American and a head librarian in Rome.

I bet she loved the cats too.

There is a cat colony, the Cats of the Pyramid, living happily in this cemetery. You can donate.

Content if a bit sour.

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

“If you should think of me, smile to the next person you see.” She was an actress, I see it only now.

“Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph.”