Thinking of Legacy Takes Courage

But then, almost everything takes courage as we grow older. Today a colleague told me a story  of her relative who left a legacy of nothing but alienation and disaffection.  In a vast family, only four people attended her funeral. I was both enthralled and dismayed by the story and couldn't help wondering what legacy I'm leaving.  And how many will attend my funeral?  Will they bring flowers?

Slogging out of that swamp, I'd like to point out we've been sculpting our legacy since we were five, and it's doubtful we can leap up in our latter years and alter what we leave our descendents, either in material possessions, which is the least important, or in worldly knowledge and understanding of the love we give them in memories of us. Do we always realize what is most important, too late?  Probably. And will our descendents appreciate the legacy of our lives?  Certainly not fully - at least not until they are themselves are as old as we are.  And so it goes. 

I only hope to  be remembered as the person I know myself to be. 
 
William Butler Yeats said :
I pray -- for word is out

And prayer comes round again --
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.

It is believed that one's true poetry emerges in old age.  If this is even remotely true for poets - why not for all?  Artists, musicians, physicians - we all know older people who continue to accomplish remarkable works.  Some poets who produced great creative works well into their eighties and nineties were Alfred Tennyson, George B. Shaw, Marianne Moore,  Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost,  Robert Graves, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman. Contemporary poets Richard Wilbur, Adrienne Rich, Maya Angelou are writing and publishing in  their 80s.  


"Stanley Kunitz became the tenth Poet Laureate of the United States in the autumn of 2000. Kunitz was ninety-five years old at the time, still actively publishing and promoting poetry to new generations of readers." From  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3869

"One of Stanley Kunitz's greatest loves was gardening. 'It's the way things are,' he once said, 'death and life inextricably bound to each other. One of my feelings about working the land is that I am celebrating a ritual of death and resurrection. Every spring I feel that. I am never closer to the miraculous than when I am grubbing in the soil.' Kunitz was 99 years old when he published his last book in 2005. He died the following year."   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nihqt3Ct2KU.  from Poetry Everywhere – Garrison Keillor. See Stanley Kunitz reading "Touch Me," the final poem in his final collection.  It is a meditation on the passage of time, beautiful and honest. 



Touch Me


Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.