Death Came

Death came to me one morning in the mirror
Those livid lines beneath the eyes
The greenish tincture of an upset liver
The weariness of enterprise
Of yet another day another guise.

I saw him first on Ipanema’s shore
Naked mid a cloud of flies
And then blood-covered in the weld of war
And sounding to a mother’s cries;
Injustice Man and Nature both ignore.

I saw the end thinking it can’t apply
So early and to such as I
Almost sixty and yet nothing done
An unachieving life, a crime;
So go I guilty to the end of mine.



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