Grace Paley

This Life

 

My friend tells me
a man in my house jumped off the roof
the roof is the eighth floor of this building
the roof door was locked how did he manage?
his girlfriend had said goodbye I’m leaving
he was 22
his mother and father were hurrying
at that very moment
from upstate to help him move out of Brooklyn
they had heard about the girl

the people who usually look up
and call jump jump did not see him
the life savers who creep around the back staircases
and reach the roof’s edge just in time
never got their chance he meant it he wanted
only one person to know

did he imagine that she would grieve
all her young life away tell everyone
this boy I kind of lived with last year
he died on account of me

my friend was not interested he said you’re always
inventing stuff what I want to know how could he throw
his life away how do these guys do it
just like that and here I am fighting this
ferocious insane vindictive virus day and
night day and night and for what? for only
one thing this life this life

 

**I guess that the one thing that I came away from this poem with when I first read it was how fleeting life is, and also, at the  same time, how inevitable it is.

It’s inescapable…not, Stop the world I want to get off!!!

 

If anyone doubts these, think back. How slowly time crawled forward to your last big vacation, to a big event, but now that event seems like so long ago. 

How much can you change the past? How much can one person be perfect and avoid failure? How blind are we all to fate, and how much of our lives are dictated by the standards in which we are living?

 

In so many words, I believe that this is an underlying theme, if not message, in this poem, for this is a reminiscence on the end of life for someone as others’ lives continue to change around them.

However, they are also reminders of the lives we live, and a message from beyond; to enjoy the time we have, to never take anything for granted.

 

Seasons change, and people grow older, but the essentials never do.