page 221

The Carpe Diem Poem

The gravestone nominates an illness.
Likewise the doctor, though he knows a longer name.
The niece, weeping throughout the long and
stumbling climb,
thinks something else, or maybe she thinks nothing.
Mediterranean death can be a puzzle—
the climate making mistakes inside the body.
Now you surprise me with your photographs and fog.
I thought you had a life to live.
I thought you had those other things to do.