“We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.”
—Winston Churchill
“Abandon Ship,” I said to myself
for no reason
just a little before a late sunrise.
Why do I say two words that frighten me,
a command I was never given except by myself?
In a drill, we rehearsed the possibility
three score and ten years ago.
January 2nd, 2018,
last night I made a resolution:
this year no friends will die.
In the cloistered convent of Santo Domigo,
in Toledo, Spain, a black veiled nun
greeted me through iron bars, said,
“Quien pasa un Enero, vive un año entero,”
that was icy January 1959
in a place of contemplation.
* * *
Five days passed. On the seventh of January,
Daniel, my friend for 60 years,
Eugene, my friend for 50, died on the same day.
In the evening of that day,
I heard a third friend, a poet
refused a tablespoon of coffee
he just asked for, stumbling for words—
he could not swallow or get out of bed.
When we first met I was nineteen,
he was buying a girlfriend a pretty bottle
of perfume, Evening in Paris.
My first words to him in a pharmacy-bookstore:
“Every whore in Paris wears that.”
8th of January, about noon
his wife called and said, “Aaron’s dead,
eight days after his 92nd birthday.”
January 10, Laren called from Germany,
“Yusef had a stroke, his right side and left arm
are paralyzed.” I called him, we chattered,
he did not say, “Goodbye,” he said, “Man, keep the faith.”
January 22, Christopher emailed me from Tangier,
“Stanley,
I’m sorry to tell you Bill Jordan just died.”
February 1, at a party I was told,
“Arthur died yesterday.”
He was my oldest friend.
At seventeen, we joined the Navy,
bunked together. Later he lost a leg,
had six children, twenty-nine grandchildren last count.
He had the heartiest laugh I ever heard,
it rocked the ship. I loved him.
I do not abandon ship, I bail with my hands.
I’m not afraid to say I don’t know.
I wish the world a Happy New Year!