Sixty
After several decades’ listening
To my heart beat, & several times a day
Asking myself would I see it happening,
Could one observe oneself slipping away;
In fact too terrified of dying to
Do anything but question what & how
I’d feel, or if I would, I did allow,
Finally, awareness to sink through
The whole show’d be over, or, better said,
The sheer weight of anxiety made me know
The unretreating future. When or where
It would take place, or whether help was there
None of that mattered. I was interested
Only, now, in letting myself go
After several decades’ listening
To my heart beat, & several times a day
Asking myself would I see it happening,
Could one observe oneself slipping away;
In fact too terrified of dying to
Do anything but question what & how
I’d feel, or if I would, I did allow,
Finally, awareness to sink through
The whole show’d be over, or, better said,
The sheer weight of anxiety made me know
The unretreating future. When or where
It would take place, or whether help was there
None of that mattered. I was interested
Only, now, in letting myself go
David Galler
The Magic Realists
Tonight all over this divided city, where
people in small terraced houses are
viewing the big gangster movie on
BBC, one family, watching a mobster
riding shot-gun in a stolen car,
hears him come raging through their own front door
Tonight all over this divided city, where
people in small terraced houses are
viewing the big gangster movie on
BBC, one family, watching a mobster
riding shot-gun in a stolen car,
hears him come raging through their own front door
