Will the last leg come with pockets

or without;

that's my concern

At the night table,

will there be a notebook;

will I know how to steer a pen,

this is my concern

Will communication be a one-sided love affair

'tween me and a piece of paper;

that's ok,

as long as I can think a thought

and make it dance

After a late summer, fall, winter

& early spring

spent upstairs in Northbothnia

with the Wildwife, horses & cats

on the farm,

I'm off, after a while, for a while,

downstairs

to my ”retreat”, my southern apartment,

kept for good luck and just in case

down in Southmanland,

where everything, almost,

that's been constituting my flaking persona,

has been under lock & key

up a stairwell

all those months:

such as the lion part of my library

and music of all kinds and traditions

competing with the books

around the walls,

from floor to ceiling

and down again from ceiling to floor,

plus correspondences with the Giants of the Earth:

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Terry Riley, Folke Rabe

and the unmentioned numerous;

a richness that late in life weighs one down,

rather than elevates;

the bottomline of that retreat of sorts

a row of earlier versions of myself

like mirrors in mirrors;

a perpetual series of stills;

a frozen architecture of mind

having its engraved say

in the carved coincidences

of the diaries from 1963 on

I'm well aware that this can't go on;

I'll be in some kind of finality

sooner than later

The sound art I take credit for

- thousands of works of various durations -

are beginning to fade in a waining earshot

which I'm vainly trying

to get the renowned Swedish health care system

to remedy,

being held off with the remark that I hear

”enough” as it is for now...,

while, in this remarkably strong body,

a weakness sometimes leadens my lightness,

having me feel that last leg kicking in the morning

I sense the material and immaterial riches

downstairs in Southmanland slipping

out of my reach,

out of my interest, even,

as I prepare for the scattering

of all items

far beyond their true worth,

for who would have the interest,

incentive & energy

to seep through all that,

beyond the landlord's clearing of the flat

for the next tenant

That is natural,

this awaits all of us,

with a few exceptions,

like Bob Dylan, with his Tulsa museum!

But I confess, it pains me, periodically,

to be so vain & so in vain

when the bottomline push comes to shove

and the transfer of power is executed,

as I hear David Bowie's Blackstar album

and Leonard Cohen's You Want It Darker ditto

with the song Leaving the Table,

finally letting Lucien Stryk's rendition

of Fuyō Dōkai's death poem

enlightening my morning

on an old Folkways Records issue:

”Seventy-six, done with this world.

I've not sought heaven,

don't fear hell.

I'll lay these bones

beyond the triple world,

unenthralled, unperturbed”

I ponder that last leg,

and I wonder;

will it allow a whisper,

will it come with pockets,

that's my concern

Will there be a notebook

at the night table;

will there even be as night table;

will I have words to spell,

will my pen dance, will it swirl,

that's my concern;

will there be a thought,

will I see it dance;

that's my concern