I looked ahead to my life then.
It seemed to await me somewhere
to the west, over that whalehump
of a hill on the horizon and grandly
alluded to in a stunned splendor
of cumulus Corinths and Camelots. . . . Now,

here I stand again. And, oddly,
the now-ness of this Now, fifty
years after, feels just the same
as the first Now. . . . I think there is nothing
but Now, and we surf on it. . . . Or
that time is like Treasury paper, a
deficit passing current, sure
to smother us in the end. . . . I think:
Half a century blown, and what's bought?
Some pride, but as much regret.
And these, too, soon to be spent.

And less splendor in the whole of it
than in one hour of those dazzling, immense
cordilleras of mock-marble, building
into a blue August zenith,
without history and without intent.