A Committee of Scholars Describe the Future Without Me
by Jimmy Carter
Some shy professors, forced to write
about a time that's bound to come
when my earthly life is done
described my ultimate demise
in lovely euphemistic words
invoking pleasant visions of
burial rites, with undertakers,
friends, kinfolks, and pious pastors
gathered round my flowery casket
eyes uplifted
breaking new semantic ground
by not just saying
I have passed on
joined my maker
or gone to the Promised Land
but stating the lamented fact
in the best and gentlest terms
that I, now dead, have recently
reduced my level of participation.
from: Jimmy Carter, Always a Reckoning and Other Poems (New York, 1995), 25.
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