revise, revise

On Turning Sixty-One

Fitzgerald’s last line;

longing, lovingly

rendered in fourteen

words, ode

to inevitability

in any tongue.

“So we beat on”,

aching,

“boats against the current”,

 our urgent

she bu de!,

she bu de!/

I can’t bear

to let go!,

“borne back”

on music

in the Latin,

de mihi tempus/

give me more

time. 

Songs echo

“ceaselessly into the past.”