(from) The Giant In The Cradle Poem by Gregg G Brown

I
Perhaps it is no occasion for a poem,
Being alive, and so much of the world gone over
To death. Being alive ought to be to be, to
Oblately be, like the reflecting pool at Versailles
With its zillion squiggles of fiery lines, heedless
Of the poem's primped trumpeting, spritzed for its
Enlivening, pinch and kiss of a nasty aunt,
Mentholated smoke blown in the occasion's face.

….so much has gone over already, so much….

Our whole world will go over to death,
And all of the poems will have worn out their heels
Slowing us stuttering down the backward hill.
Barefoot at last, we pirouette over a wormy log
Into the bleak hole our hale love of Earth prepared,
Long ago, for us—for us alone, that hole. For us,
And all those bones not yet born.

What can the most fertile couplet fructify
When all that lives must also die?

If it is not for ourselves or for the dead
That life must be enlivened, then why
Cry "liberté! " at all? Why inaugurate the wish
Life could be bounties of loosened roses,
And not hard bright bales of tears?
Or, if it must be tears, unwillingly wept—
Ruddy tears that have roses at their core.