perhaps

PERHAPS ABSURD


Sometimes we’re in remission and
sometime we’re in relapse.
Life’s like this. If we understand,
we know just why “perhaps”
must be the most important word
that we can ever use,
apart, perhaps from this: “absurd,”
It’s up to you to choose.

Inspired by John Stokes’s article on Simon Gray, in the TLS, December 5, 2008 (“Curtain Down”. Gray died of lung cancer, and reviewing his last book, “Coda,” Stokes writes:

On previous occasions Gray has had a rather different view of cancer, his idea being that the term “in remission” merely confirms a shgared mortality. He made a young cancer patient say as much in his 1990 play Hidden Laughter, and he returned to the thought in The Last Cigarette (published earlier this year) hen, brooding on the death of Alan Bates and the fragile condition of Harold Pinter, he remarked, “we’re all, always, in remission, even the healthiest of us. In fact, from the day we’re born.”

© 2009 Gershon Hepner 4/23/09