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FOR THE GERUND MAN ( 1895 - 1962 ) We live through deaths; through dying, live we whose cessant moments seem incessant every ever broken into each--each as if a dissonance planed and narrowed into life. Between birth and cessant breath, now moving, now mortal, now flesh, now fluid, now no more than future, now less than past, now perfecting through grey hair, larded muscles, now turns toward death. A century between us, each year marked as a generation of second moments breathing past; each breath, death again; yet you live in memeory, ramify in cells reborn, cells that have taken names familiar to your ear. They too the struggle against death, another death, the old who have so often died and, dying, lived, the very moment of their birth began to die, is dead. They spit, these dying come upon their death again. They ramble, senile, surrendering moments, each moment welded into ever. Such it is: life passing for an ever; every each distended; all the evers ever but an each. Such for each. So, father, you have passed and, passing, proven life; Thus, my son, you have come and, coming, proven death. Thus daughter, wife, and mother live but this brief moment--we, together as if forever cohabitant in memory, remembering: we, the seam that binds bound by love, stretches between moments, each giving, blending into each moment to make forever. For you and I, a century and all these brave worlds -- ours, theirs, and yours -- play one with another rhythm, time and harmony. Parents and their parents, children and their children, a symphony en passant. So, father, you have passed and, passing, proven life; and I am thanking you. And I am thanking you for each moment as if an ever, every moment a shared forever-- I with you, you with my son in whom you live; you with my son in whom I live; We live through deaths; through dying, live. (To copy or translate this poem, please contact JOHN HORVÁTH, JR.) TRANSLATOR and ILLUSTRATOR WANTED FOR THIS PAGE
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