"THE USES OF POETRY" by Anne Atik 

FOR S.B. (13 APRIL 1906-22 DECEMBER 1989)

I

A Bible-reading man, he came and left between two holy days he didn't much observe:
the Good Friday of his birth, near the Christmas of his death.
His life between, a pilgrim's progress with a smile for what he saw along the way and wrote of, oversleeping, age and hope and sloth.
Then saw, and wrote of, wrenched along the way, age and hope and helpless weeping. But
he would have, reading those two states, rejected both as most remotely holding but one part
or more than minute dose
of the inexpressible, whole truth of how it is, it was. 

II 

He showed the shortest way to get across a line like this:
crossed out such words as these to get to speechlessness.
He crossed out rivers to get to their stones.
To get to the bottom, when the crisis is reached and truth-telling begins.
Whatever he knew he knew to music.
He found the pace for misery, matched distress to syncope, and joke to a Beethoven stop at the punch line.
But thought that he'd failed to find failure's pulse.
What that says about failure, music and us.
*
Samuel Beckett was an artist with so jaundiced a vision of human existence that he managed to be born not only on Friday the 13th, but on one that coincided with Good Friday. Later, he would allude to the day of Christ's death in an immortal quip in Waiting for Godot: "One of the [Calvary] thieves was saved. It's a reasonable percentage."
Champion of ambiguity