Living My Life Anew Poem by gershon hepner

If could live my life anew––
Borgès fantasized he might––
my life would be a déjà vu
of all the things I’d not got right
the first time round, plus maybe more
mistakes in this re-rerun, for I
would not be able to restore
my kudos in my second try.

Just like Borgès, I might commit
more errors and would try to be
less perfect, but my next obit
would say fate was not accompli
for me although good fortune beckoned,
allowing me to run again,
like unsuccessful candidates, a second
post-dismissal mise-en-scène.

Perhaps I’d eat more ice-cream and
take more vacations, but each word
that I today can’t understand
would still seem to me as absurd
as it does now, and that’s what counts––
not ice-cream and vacations, but
attempts to make from life an ounce
of sense, whose door is always shut.

Of course I’d travel lighter, buy
less stuff, and always on the move,
would in a second lifetime try,
quixotic ever, to disprove
ideas that obviously are wrong,
believed by almost everyone,
like love will conquer all, and long
for life again to be well done.

Though life, I think, is like a steak,
I greatly want mine to be rare,
a second helping a mistake
for which I do not greatly care,
at 71, and not yet dying,
with 14 years still left to catch
Borgès at 85, while trying
to light my life without a match.

Inspired by Borgès’s “Instantes, ” which my friend Sueila Pedrozo recalled after reading my Clarice Lispector-inspired poem “So Mysterious” that I dedicated to Linda:

If I were able to live my life anew,
In the next I would try to commit more errors.
I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more.
I would be more foolish than I've been,
In fact, I would take few things seriously.
I would be less hygienic.
I would run more risks,
take more vacations,
contemplate more sunsets,
climb more mountains, swim more rivers.
I would go to more places where I've never been,
I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans,
I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people that lived sensibly
and prolifically each minute of his life;
Of course I had moments of happiness.
If I could go back I would try
to have only good moments.

Because if you didn't know, of that is life made:
only of moments; Don't lose the now.

I was one of those that never
went anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot-water bottle,
an umbrella, and a parachute;
If I could live again, I would travel lighter.

If I could live again,
I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring
and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends.
I would take more cart rides,
contemplate more dawns,
and play with more children,
If I had another life ahead of me.

But already you see, I am 85,
and I know that I am dying.

8/14/09