Twenty Years Later

[tomsdisch]

I wonder what will have become of me
twenty years from now. I'll be almost 87
and perhaps not in the best of health.
My hope must be they will have found a cure
for diabetes by then. As for the arthritis
that might fix itself if I could just shed
fifty or sixty pounds. My worry, really,
is for the world beyond my sickbed.
Will whales and polar bears still be battling
extinction? Will Israel? Will I have finished
A Dance to the Music of Time, which now
I have barely begun? It was Powell
who started this hare by closing his second chapter
with the offhand comment that someone
getting into a taxi would not reappear
in his novel for another twenty years.
Who could keep from wondering:
what if that someone were me?

--Tom Disch