New and Selected Poems, 1957-2011

Turning 60

126 TURNING 60 The first 40 years of life give us the text; the next 30 supply the commentary on it . . . —Schopenhauer 1. Homework According to Webster, the word six derives from the Latin “sex” [s-e-x] and the Greek “hex” [h-e-x]. Six units or members as, an ice-hockey team; a 6-cylinder engine; six fold, six-pack, sixpenny nail, sixshooter , sixth sense. “Zero” denotes the absence of all magnitude, the point of departure in reckoning; the point from which the graduation of a scale (as of a thermometer) begins; zero hour, zeroth, as, “the zero power of a number.” Zero, the great “there’s nothing there” number, a blast off into a new decade. 2. Grammar as Hymnal Seeking solace in a review of grammar, I turned to Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. Standing at attention, opening to the section on usage, I chanted and sang— uniting my voice with the voices of others, the vast chorus of the lovers of English. 127 We sing of verb tense, past, present and future. We sing the harmony of simple tenses. We lift our voice in praise of action words, and the function of verb tense. We sing of grammar which is our compass providing, as it does, clues as to how we might navigate the future, at the same time it illuminates the past. As a teacher, I talk. That’s present. For thirty years as a teacher, I talked. That’s past. It may only be part time, but I will talk. That’s future. 3. Living the Future Perfect I will have invoked the muse. I will have remembered to give thanks, knowing our origins are in the invisible, and that we once possessed boundless energy, but were formless, and that we are here to know ‘the things of the heart through touching.’ 128 I will have remembered, too, that there is only one thing we all possess equally and that is our loneliness. I will have loved. You will have loved. We will have loved. ...