A Brief Life

Excuse me

I'm just passing through

and I wish to see

everything beautiful and ugly, too.

I want to see and be

where a mountain meets the sea

or where a swift river

empties into an ocean

or where a vast golden meadow

melts into the bluest of sky

or on a summit's solace atop cumuli.

Inasmuch as I want to see happy faces

with crow's feet and wrinkles that coax

skins into pleasant smiles

I need as well to glimpse tears

that well up and fall

into the depths of sadness and despair

grimaces, too, and the empty gazes of hopelessness.

I may need to immerse myself

in gluttony and vile

and turpitude by all names

to be indifferent

to wrinkled, begging palms

to pleading, dirty faces of street urchins

if only to be human, to be frail

to be out of grace, to be damned

to glimpse both beautiful and ugly

taste and smell delicious and revolting

experience happy and sad.