Jack Kerouac : ‘SEPT. 16, 1961, POEM’

How awfully sad i felt thinking of my sleeping mother in her bed
that she’ll die someday
tho she herself always says “death is nothing to worry about,
from this life we start to another”
How awfully sad I felt anyway —
That have no wine to make me forget my rotting teeth is bad enough
but that my whole body is rotting and my mother’s body is rotting
towards death, it’s all so insanely sad.
I went outside in the pure dawn: but why should I be glad about
a dawn
that dawns on another rumor of war,
and why should I be sad: isnt the air at least pure and fresh?
I looked at the flowers on the bush: one of them had fallen:
another was just bloomed open: neither of them were sad or glad.
I suddenly realized all things just come and go
including any feeling of sadness: that too will go:
sad today glad tomorrow: somber today drunk tomorrow:
why fret
so much?

Everybody in the world has flaws just like me.
Why should I put myself down? Which is a feeling just coming to go.
Everything comes and goes. How good it is!
Evil wars wont stay forever!
Pleasant forms also go.
Since everything just comes and goes O why be sad? or glad?
Sick today healthy tomorrow. But O I’m so sad just the same!
Just coming and going all over the place,
the place itself coming and going.
We’ll all end up in heaven anyway, together
in that golden eternal bliss I saw.
O how damned sad I cant write about it well.
This is an attempt at the easy lightness of Ciardian poetry.
I should really use my own way.
But that too will go, worries about style. About sadness.
My little happy purring cat hates doors!
And sometimes he’s sad and silent, hot nose, sighs,
and a little heartbroken mew.
There go the birds, flying west a moment.
Who’s going to ever know the world before it goes?

[1962]