Mortality

Tonight we had a little feast
(we two alone)
to celebrate the surprising fact of our continuing existence.
On the news were people much like us
-- exactly like us but for the color of their skin and their histories --
crazy with grief for loved ones buried in the mud
in Guatemala, Mexico. Or dead of bullets in East New York or Baghdad.
Or torn apart by bombs, in Chechnya or Iraq or Israel
for no good reason any of us can fathom.
We are so fragile, all of us.
Yet we two, mine and I, remain, in an accidental niche of class and comfort,
still healthy, still reasonably secure.
It cannot last.
And so while we can we feast.

(Today I was saddened to learn of the death of Horst Bienek. It happened 15 years ago, but nobody told me.)