Elegy

Who would I show it to

—W.S. Merwin (1927–2019)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/the-final-prophecy-of-w-s-merwin

Then I spoke only once more to him....I think my question was substantially this: "You seem so near the brink of the dark river, that I almost wonder how the opposite shore may appear to you?" He then answered: "One world at a time."

—Parker Pillsbury (1809–1898) of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). Quoted in F.B. Sanborn, The Personality of Thoreau (1901)

Life's a bitch, but God forbid that bitch divorce me.
—Nas

To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

     —Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), in his posthumous book Mortality

Photo by Mabel Amber on Pixabay

People expect old men to die, 
They do not really mourn old men. 
Old men are different. People look 
At them with eyes that wonder when… 
People watch with unshocked eyes; 
But the old men know when an old man dies. 

—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)

Image by Bijay Chaurasia at Wikimedia Commons

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.

—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), The Big Sleep

"To live" means to pick up particles of death
as a child picks up crumbs from beneath the table.
"To exist" means to drop the bread behind you on the path
hoping the birds will find the crumbs and eat them.
"To live" is to rush forward eating up your own death,
like a locomotive with its catcher on, hurrying into the night.

—Robert Bly (1926–), "To live or not"

Photo of wild turkey and her chicks at Cumberland Island National Seashore from PxHere