Last Words
If only for those you leave behind,
don’t be forced to cram and get cut short,
like poor Max Baer, who noted, “Here
I go,” or Poncho Villa, pleading “Don’t let it
end like this. Tell them I said something.”
Ibsen, hearing friends outside his room
agree that he seemed much better,
had only time to sit up and announce,
“On the contrary!” then drop dead.
Beware the blindside, or you may depart
like William Barton Rogers, stopped midway
through his commencement speech at
“bituminous coal” or Dylan Thomas,
telling his White Horse Tavern buddies,
“I’ve had eighteen straight whiskeys.
I think that’s the record” or Union General
John Sedgwick, confident, “They couldn’t
hit an elephant at this distance.”
If you favor wit, you’re up against pros
like Heine, who said, as worried friends
pressed around, “God will forgive me:
It’s his metier.” Voltaire, when asked by priests
to forswear Satan, countered, “This is no time
to make new enemies.” The grand Pavlova
quipped, “Get my swan costume ready.”
If high sentence is your choice, there’s always
John Q. Adams’ “This is the last of earth.
I am content.” or, in certain situations,
Nathan Hale’s “ I regret I have but one life
to give to my country,” though some say
he followed up with, “Let me rephrase that.”
Or perhaps you’d simply like to underscore
the world’s injustice, like Thomas Grasso,
who strangled one aged victim with her
Christmas lights, and said, about his last meal:
“I didn’t get my Spaghetti-Os. I got spaghetti.
I want the press to know that.”
