“But surely for me this beauty is enough
Always like this to live, and never die,
Watching while iridescent duck-wings carve
In wild geometry the evening sky. . . .”
—Sidney Keyes, from ‘Fragment: Shall the Dead Return?’
Lately1 I conclude my days by falling into bed to read (aloud to myself) as much as I can from the symbolically-saturated, proto-psychedelic poetry of Sidney Keyes (what holds greater delight than an obscure anthology, ILLed?) before succumbing to an exhausted ecstatic haze.
Explosions in my brain comparable to discovering Musica Antiqua Köln & Goebel’s Pachelbel or the first time that KN cooked me pork with the sous vide and I actually cried.
And a touch of despair. Am I capable of contributing something this beautiful to the world before my time to depart? A offering, an expression of gratitude for the chance to live?
If I’m not, will it matter?
And if I am…
Will it matter?
But it’s ok. Mattering doesn’t matter. At least, not in the way I used to think it did. And this thought calms me.