Venerate
You Do Realize
By Richard Marcus
1-You do realize
They’re going to all be gone soon.
The last ones with the comic accents;
Mishpucha, famiglia, kin, kith.
Brooklyn. South Boston. Chicago.
Tongues mixed with poverty and cabbage.
They’re almost all used up.
Almost all gone.
The last ones who remember us as children,
Whether we want them to or not.
Our children find it hard to believe.
You don’t understand, we say,
You don’t understand.
They were giants.
Little, tiny giants who owned appliance stores,
Who got very far up in companies,
Who should have invested.
They’re going to all be gone soon.
The “greatest generation.”
The one that saved the world.
Disregarding that they saved it
From their own generation, but
That’s another story.
They’re fading fast.
Drying up.
Busy, busy all day,
Like in the brochures.
Pictures of swimming pools and dining rooms.
Whispering away in Boca, Boynton Beach, Port St. Lucie,
Whispering away with memory of the bright big bands,
Echoing across the lake, and the twinkling lights.
How rich it was when they would go dancing.
How rich the world was.
2-They’re going to all be gone soon.
We find that hard to believe,
That they will all be gone.
They find it hard to believe.
You can bet on that.
They were the generation that saved the world.
You can bet on that.
Then we had to save it from them.
Our children go about
Making their own dominion,
Saving it for themselves.
Making their own history
Anyway they goddamn please,
It seems to us.
3-They’re going to all be gone soon,
And we still ask about their history.
They still shake their heads.
“You wouldn’t understand. Times were different.
“Things happened. We had responsibilities.”
They’re right.
We’ll never understand.
We didn’t want to fill their shoes.
Which is maybe why they are in Boca,
Boynton Beach, and Port St. Lucie.
We’ve worked hard to forgive ourselves.
Worked hard to make sure everyone understands.
Our children don’t ask.
We want them to.
We tell them
We understand.
Backwards on backwards.
We’ll see if it stays that way.
4-They’re going to all be gone soon.
How can that be?
There were so many of them.
They did just about everything.
And now they’re going to be all gone?
How can that be?
We make room for friends and more friends,
To join us in the choir of middle-aged orphans.
We must be firm with them.
“They’re going to all be gone soon.”
We say to stricken faces. “Yes, we know,
They were giants.”
Yes, the greatest generation.
Gone. Every last one.
Such a silence we can’t imagine.
Whispering away with memory of the bright big bands,
Echoing across the lake,
And the twinkling lights.
How rich it was when they would go dancing.
How rich the world was.
Richard Marcus is a screenwriter and poet who llives in Portland, Oregon. His lated film, Checking Out, is on DVD.
