WAITING FOR THE TIME

L

For all that death

appears on screen more commonly than clichés,

the real thing’s undermentioned.

Here we go…

St L

Life is bad

Death is good.

Life is bad. Death is good.

No, I don’t think repetition’s going to crack it.

 

Be

After the chemo

comes the waiting

and the - rather oddly timed  –

splitting of my thumbs.

S

What nonsense is this diagnosis?

I can feel the life-force

pulsing through me -

or is that it draining away?

Be

I'm a little fed up

with being told I look better

than when I was well. What will I gain

from being the halest of corpses?

 

L

Am I living with death

or dying with life?

What sounds important

may be no distinction…

L

Here’s my chintzy cheeriness

The half-alive is what you see,

the half-dead what the doctors say

is plotting from within.

Bo 

If you're going to have a run-in

with death - and you are -

you might as well have it

while you’re still feeling good. 

St L

People say I’m stoic

but the pain’s been nothing much.

And as for death,

I’m not expecting anything at all.

Am

We all need death

to come to terms

with horror and injustice:

without it we’d be stuck with them.

 

L

Spilling water onto my laptop

I feared the worst.

But my data arose in a new body

and I began to wonder…  

 

St L 

Writing my computer off

made me think of all the things

that haven't yet gone wrong.

They'd better get a move on if they're serious.

L

How soon

will I be able to say -

supposing I can say it at all –

‘I’m dead and I am perfectly content’?

Be

Why the plaintive note

in ‘you can’t take it with you’?

Nothing you could take would help

to deal with an eternity of nothing.

L

Is death

stronger than life?

Not really: they are co-dependent

and life, after all, comes first.

Be

I have my senses

and my sense of having senses

and now the sense that they’ll be lost

before I’ve even come to them in full.

 

L

When the big death’s on your mind

the little ones are quite a nice distraction.

What nonsense is that?

They always were. 

 

L 

Of life

I know enough to understand my ignorance.

Of death,

I know as much as anyone.

 

L

My birthday was fun

Presents, grandchildren, cake, meal out…

How about another one,

same time next year?

 

 

S

I have just two questions

When am I crossing into the black?

And, supposing that you’ve got the answer,

do I really want to know? 

 

 

 L

I’m dying too late

2010 was optimal - unalarmed by global warming,

unaware that all these years

of Tory bodge-and-Brexit were to follow.

 

L

I think, on reflection

I’ll take a chance on death –

even though I can’t yet know

how it’s going to be.

L

Most cattle only exist

because they can be killed for beef.

will I – even though less tasty –

be delivering a purpose in death?

L

Why is the expression

‘take it or leave it’

when ‘take it and leave it’

would get closer to the core of life?

 L

Procedure postponed

I should be pleased to be judged

less likely to die soon than whoever’s bumped me.

And yet I am not.

 

L

‘Live in the present’

would be a more meaningful motto

we're there any other

opportunity to do so.

 

St L 

I don't deal

in certainties.

And what would be the point of odds

if you didn't defy them?

 

Am

‘That’s Life’

ran for 21 years on the BBC.

There seems little danger

of anyone commissioning ‘That’s Death’.

 

L

How can I complain?

Look what Alexander the Great,

Schubert, Keats and Seurat

achieved in less than half my time.

L

Mine is such a tiny death

up against our species death,

the planet's death, the universe's...

I’m not sure it really counts at all.

L

My plan’s to keep moving

onwards and upwards.

My back-up plan’s to die -

but with no regrets.

 

Am

Death is here 

as it always was, 

smuggling in

its opposite of ‘always’.

 

 

L

I'm dying, which is interesting

I'd sooner not - or not just yet -

but why not make the most of it?

I'll only get one chance.

L

Following a laparoscopy 

my bladder’s full 

but I can't pee the way I must

before they'll tell me to piss off.

 

L

Will death suit me?

I’m pretty sure so,

same as it suits everyone

living in a world beyond fashion.

 

L

It's my death

and I'll smile if I want to

right up to the point when my expression is fixed

in what, by then, might look more like a grimace. 

Am

Somewhat ironically

– when you consider the depth of slumber it guarantees –

death never sleeps:

you can go at any time.

 

 L 

Too soon for me

but maybe too soon for most.

In which case it’s simply

part of the condition.

Br

Dementia

seems to have sneaked ahead of cancer

as public health enemy No. 1.

But why should I fear it?

 

Am

Allergic to life?

That will be sorted.

Allergic to death?

It’s a little more tricky…

 

L

If death's been issued with a moral code

– 'though shalt kill', presumably –

would it be wrong of me, 

supposing I could, to resist it? 

 

L

According to Gil Evans

there’s no such thing as a wrong note,

it’s what you do next which can yield a mistake...

but death is a wrong note with nothing to follow.

 

S

‘Since we’re all going to die’

says Camus, ‘it’s obvious

that when and how don’t matter’.

It isn’t so very obvious to me. 

St L

Why should I hurry?

I’ll be late soon enough

with no reason to care

about how soon I got there.

L

How does it feel

to be a rock

or a cloud or a clod?

The afterlife will tell me, I suppose.

 

L

It’s a pity

there’s no God.

He’d know how I adore life

and extend it, for sure.

Am

I cannot know

what I would be

were I not me

but I guess I am about to find out.

Am

God knows if he exists

His existence being proved

by just that the knowledge

in a way that ours - arguably - is not.

L

How can I prove that I exist?

I’m content with the awareness

of how different it’s going to be

when I don’t.

Am

Will God mind

That I didn't believe in him?

I don't suppose

I'll ever find that out. 

 

L

If death's intervention

doesn't prove the blank end I assume,

take this as the apology

I may, even so, be unable to make.

S

The point to remember

is that I won’t have a body

so, even if there is a hell,

no suffering can be involved?

St L

Will this sequence 

have an afterlife?

All that I'll say is

it has a better chance than me.

L

The éclat of death

is hardly something to applaud –

however nobly you may  go

to find there’s no maker to meet.

Am

‘There is no alternative’

said Margaret Thatcher.

Sure enough,

she’s dead.

 

L

So what’s it like

to know you're doomed?

You tell me:

we're all in this together. 

L

Despite

there being fewer pieces

the endgame

is not the easiest part of chess.

 

Br

Is the date fixed at birth

as determinists would have it?

If so I’m determined in turn

to defy the run of fate.

L

Would it be daft to ask of death

'What's in it for me?'

knowing that the answer

is going to be 'nothing'.

L

Death: who needs it? 

Everyone, eventually.

But did Perec need it in 1982?

I rest my implausible case.

Br

Would a world without death

be truly beautiful

or a terrible disaster

to make me regret that selfish hope?

 

 L

Wakeful at three

I imagine my coffin being borne

past the greatest works of art in turn

before getting back to sheep.

 

 S

He wrote a hundred books…

scored five hundred goals…

made a thousand women happy…

The best lines for a funeral are way beyond me now.

 

L

I’m determined

that my funeral will be fun for real.

If anybody cries

I'll never speak to them again.

J

No

to negativity:

I will not be defined by what is not,

even if it turns out to be me

 

L

What's the fuss?

Once you've gone

You might as well

be forgotten. 

 

 

Context

I wouldn't claim my normal year is typical of many people - visit a thousand art shows in London and abroad, plus several art fairs; curate four or five exhibitions; write a hundred articles and catalogue essays; post regularly on three Instagram accounts; produce a few hundred photo-poems; talk to many artists, and interview twenty in depth. Too much, of course, but what I enjoy. Anyway, once I knew my case was probably terminal, in the period after chemo but before a definite diagnosis, I was keen to get back to my usual activity. That interim period lasted two months… Here I combine quatrains with photographs of points of opening, closure, time and transition taken out and about in London (mostly), Southampton, Bournemouth, St Leonards, Jersey, Brussels, Amsterdam and Berlin – places I visited during February to April 2023.

 

 

References and notes

As in 'The Death Suite' and ‘Death in the House’, there are echoes of others:

John Betjeman (‘Here’s my chintzy chintzy cheeriness’) - Death In Leamington, 1932

Charlotte Gainsbourg (‘How soon’) - The Songs that We Sing, 2007

Robert Wyatt, co-written with  Mark Kramer (‘I have my senses’ and ‘I cannot know’) – Free Will and Testament, 1997

The Fall (‘I’m dying too late’) - Living Too Late, 1986. Perhaps The Fall’s frontman, Mark E Smith (1957-2018), lived too long: he died of kidney and lung cancer, having had a better time in the 20th than 21st century.

Around a quarter of the 1bn cattle in the world are dairy cows (‘Most cattle only exist’).

There was a delay in my laparoscopy, i.e. the insertion of a camera through my stomach to check, in my case, the extent of abdominal cancer (‘Procedure postponed’)

Seymour Gottlieb (‘It’s my death’) - It’s my party, originally sung by Lesley Gore in 1963  

‘Allergic to life’ arose from mishearing Lee Scratch Perry’s ‘Allergic to Lies’, 1987

‘According to Gil Evans’: the jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader said ‘There is no such thing as a wrong note. It is always the note that follows that will define whether the first note was wrong or not’. Evans was a major influence on Miles Davis, whose pithy rendering of that advice was ‘If you hit a wrong note, hit it again!’

‘Since we’re all going to die’ refers to Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’, 1942. The narrating character says this while awaiting execution, adding ‘So, I was going to die. Sooner than other people, obviously, but everybody knows life isn’t worth living.’

‘How does it feel’ derives from  William Cullen Bryant’s 1811 poem ‘Thanatopsis’ (i.e. the sight of death), which muses on being ‘a brother to the insensible rock / And to the sluggish clod’. 

‘God knows if he exists’ and ‘How can I prove that I exist?’ touch on famous philosophical arguments. One claim is that God is perfect, and as such must exist because to fail to exist would be an imperfection. Descartes ‘Cogito ergo sum’ was his way of proving that he himself did exist.  

Beth Gibbons with Rustin Man, i.e. Paul Webb (‘It’s a pity’) – Mysteries, 2002

‘The point to remember’ cites the doctrine of Tibetan Buddhism, as in The Book of the Dead, c. 1340

Emily Dickinson (‘The éclat of death’) – collected poems 1,307: ’That short – potential stir’ c. 1874

‘Death: who needs it?’ - the French writer Georges Perec (1936-82) died of lung cancer aged 45, cutting off the supply of a remarkably imaginative oeuvre.

José Saramango (‘Would a world without death’) - Death at Intervals, 2005

‘I’m determined’ derives from a joke told by Stan Laurel (1890-1965)

 

Photographs

I have noted the locations as follows: L = London, Am = Amsterdam, Be = Berlin, Bo = Bournemouth, Br = Brussels, J = Jersey, S = Southampton, St L = St Leonards