It was all right for Eliot
in his subvocal sermon
to cast away the human hope
that time might be redeemed -
he'd somewhere else to go.
But we who are remainder
men must claim the present
from the future and the past
and find our fate and fortune
here. Yet we live too much
determined by what's gone,
too much the timid creature
in the dark; too governed
by our fear of chance,
and what we've seen of
change, to risk the leap
into a freedom of our own.
It is only on the journey
to the grave that time will
stand aside for us, and the
danger is we leave this life
chained to what we think is safe
and to hopes yet unsecured.
I promise
to go gentle from this world;
at peace with the procession
of all its parts and ages.
Rage is right for burgled youth,
it's not so good for sages.
And death is never more
confused than when we step
ahead and hold the door.
So, may I take my final ride,
when time has died for me,
from a life not mortgaged
to the future and the past.
I want to go through unfenced
open fields with open smiles
from those along the way
and be so free within myself
to smile at what I had become,
and, at what becomes of me.

Roy Davids