You realize, when it finally comes,
that you have been expecting it for years,
that you have always known, on some level,
precisely how the tale would have to end:
with a keening telephone at 3AM,
the trembling voice of the unfortunate
who must bear the news as well as the grief.
Not that such prescience is of any more use
in coping with the actual event
than prayer or poetry or benzodiazepine.
The irrational feelings of guilt,
the impotent rage and self-pity,
the insistent vision of that final scene
of solitary misery and hopelessness
toward which the plot advanced
with such remorseless inevitability:
all steadfastly refuse to be quelled,
as does the relentless psychic chorus
which continues to reiterate the obvious,
that the term "human tragedy" is tautological.
