John Updike

John Updike died this past week of lung cancer. The NYTimes published this poem from his forthcoming collection. For the record, John, I did not think you had “died a while ago” and was put out to discover your passing.

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

— John Updike