We present this work in honor of the poet’s 70th birthday.

 

To assume everything has meaning.
To return at evening
feeling you have earned a rest
and put your feet up
before a glowing TV set and fire.
To have your favorite shows.
To be married to a local
whom your parents absolutely adore.
To be satisfied with what you have,
the neighbors, the current hemline
the dual immersion, the goverment doing its best.
To keep to an average size
and buy clothes off the rack.
To bear the kind of face
that can be made-up to prettines.
To head contentedly for work
knowing how bored you’d be at home.
To book holidays to where bodies blend,
tanned like sandgrains.
To be given to little excesses,
Christmas hangovers, spike high heels,
chocolate éclair binges, lightened hair.
To postpone children until the house’s extension
can be afforded and the car paid off.
To see the world through double glazing
and find nothing wrong.
To expect to go on living like this
and to look straight forward. No regret.
To get up each day neither in wonder nor in fear,
meeting people on the bus you recognize
and who accept you, without question, for what you are.