No, Never Again Comments

This is a poem of closure. It is very urgent, and despite its carefully crafted stanza structure, it is a cry of desperation. But such is human life. To deny that would be unworthy of us after we have benefited in so many ways from the gifts of life. I too am reaching that stage of my life and I have a twin sister whose very presence in my life makes it impossible to deny. The energy, the passion in your poem plays a similar role. It creates the energy needed to propel us into this stage of time and being. // Back in the 1980s I started reading Nicholas Boyle's immense biography of Goethe. The first two volumes are Goethe the eager young man and the vital middle aged man. The third volume has not been released - that will be Goethe in the winter of his life which I will read in the winter of my life. But Boyle has already told us in vol.2 what to expect: Goethe was a Man of Desire, who in old age, with great and fierce effort, accepted the role of a Man of Renunciation. And he achieved in those last years a grace and happiness awaiting all of us who can accomplish this transition. Your poem traces that Goethean destiny awaiting us, summoning us.