Good-bye

Some days before death

    When food’s tasting sour on my tongue,

Cigarettes long abandoned,

    Disgusting now even champagne;

When I’m sweating a lot

    From the strain on a last bit of lung

And lust has gone out

    Leaving only the things of the brain;

More worthless than ever

    Will seem all the songs I have sung,

More harmless the prods of the prigs,

    Remoter the pain,

More futile the Lord Civil Servant

    As, rung upon rung,

He ascends by committees to roofs

    Far below on the plain.

But better down there in the battle

    Than here on the hill

With Judgement or nothingness waiting me,

    Lonely and chill.