enlargePrint defaultSize The theme for our poems is death and dying. (Not your normal wellness theme, but still an inevitability that can be handled well.) Since the last issue of Well we lost two singer/songwriters who at first glance have little in common, other than their profession, but on closer inspection have many similarities. The two singers in question are Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon. The approach of death seemed to be a catalyst for productivity and each produced some of their best work as their bodies failed. Both men approached death with dignity and perhaps even a sense of gratitude. They were musicians' musicians who were admired by their peers and at different times they each recorded with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and members of Fleetwood Mac among many others. They each used drugs heavily as young performers and were able to beat their addictions and their demons. Both did recordings with their children. Thanks Warren and Johnny, you will be missed, but have left a great legacy. Four Weddings Poem Called "Funeral Blues" in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, but "XX" in the collection. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one: Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods: For nothing now can ever come to any good. ~ W.H.Auden XX ~ The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden 1945 Departures By Linday Pastan They seemed to all take off at once: Aunt Grace whose kidneys closed shop; Cousin Rose who fed sugar to diabetes; my grandmother's friend who postponed going so long we thought she'd stay. It was like the summer years ago when they all set out on trains and ships, wearing hats with veils and the proper gloves, because everybody was going someplace that year, and they didn't want to be left behind. PERFECTION WASTED By John Updike And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market -- the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, their tears confused with their diamond earrings, their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, their response and your performance twinned. The jokes over the phone. The memories packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act. Who will do it again? That's it: no one; imitators and descendants aren't the same POETIC JUSTICE By JOHN ALLEMAN The Art of War Leni Riefenstahl, Aug. 22, 1902-Sept. 8, 2003 We now see evil as banal, No thanks to Leni Riefenstahl. Her lens turned misfits into gods, And Calvin Kleined those Aryan bods To make the heroes Germans craved -- For how could beauty be depraved? By bringing style to war's debris, She found art's fearful symmetry. No need to ask just what she knew About the fate of any Jew -- In loving shots of Nazi abs, She blessed all fascist power grabs. To pretty up the master race Should be a sure route to disgrace, And yet her legacy lives on Wherever beauty plays its con -- All those sucked in by looks that kill Are cheering Triumph of the Will. Leni Riefenstahl, for a number of years, was Hitler's cinematographer, producing dazzling films about the Nazi party such as the "Triumph of Will" depicting the Nuremberg Rally and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Roxy R.I.P. And finally a tribute to our Speakwell cat, Roxy, who died last month at age 20. We miss her manic morning 'operas' and her presence in the 'in-tray' on the office desk and we miss her constant love of affection and attention. She was a resident in the Speakwell office and her presence always made things a little softer and more mellow. In later years, the only mouse she came close to was the one attached to our computer and then one day she moved from the 'in-tray' to the 'out-tray' and went on to higher things. To a Cat Mirrors are not more wrapt in silences nor the arriving dawn more secretive; you, in the moonlight, are that panther figure which we can only spy at from a distance. By the mysterious functioning of some divine decree, we seek you out in vain; remoter than the Ganges or the sunset, yours is the solitude, yours is the secret. Your back allows the tentative caress my hand extends. And you have condescended, since that forever, now oblivion, to take love from a flattering human hand. you live in other time, lord of your realm - a world as closed and separate as dream. ~ Jorge Luis Borges