Sadness

Sooner or later it comes to everyone:

the beautiful prom queen who has lost a breast,

the Don Juan of the tenth grade who has

turned up impotent, the fleet chiropodist

who has developed a limp. Sooner or later it comes,

and you are never prepared for it quite yet,

you who had hoped to be spared through another epoch

of your rightful happiness, you who had always

given to charity. Like a gargantuan tackle

lumbering toward you, it comes and comes,

and—though you may double lateral all you wish,

though you may throw a perfect spiral

up the middle to some ecstatic receiver

and be blessed blue-green some night

by the ministrations of strangers—it will not

spare you. It comes and comes, inevitable

as sunrise, palpable as longing,

and we must go on

laughing it right in the face

until it learns to sing again.

--Michael Blumenthal