R.I.P. John Updike

[ewmayer]

As many of you will likely have already heard, American author John Updike died on Tuesday. One of his last poems - whose cadence seems to echo Robert Frost's classic Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - was printed by the New York Times today in its Op-Ed section:

John Updike | Requiem

Requiem

By JOHN UPDIKE
Published: January 28, 2009

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

— JOHN UPDIKE

This poem is taken from John Updike’s forthcoming collection, “Endpoint and Other Poems.”

[garo]

Thanks for that Ernst. Saw it on the news Wednesday and surprised it didn't register much in the papers. Perhaps tomorrow's commie rag will carry a long obit.