The General's Memoirs

What do you forgive the man

Who has forgotten everything?
Do you let him lie all afternoon
On the tattered green couch

Beside the pile of books, of work,
Of things that should have been undone
Yesterday, when he was still of a mind
To solve things? That's a lot

To ask of yourself in the name
Of what might have been a gift
Of extraordinary life, maybe was
So, but is now a heap of little errors.

If I have to read or hear one more time
About the artist perpetually in debt,
The composer making a shambles
Alongside of all those masterpieces,

If I have to wonder one more time
About the ordinary, vacant souls
My mother tended to in nursing homes
And all the schemes they might have been,

I'll just go back to sleep. How can we
Try so hard to elaborate imaginary
Worlds no mortal animals can live in
Who aren't content to be immortal?