I’m remembering – or half-remembering – something from a book and am now demented trying to identify the book. You know the drill.
The passage is about death and is to the effect that the date of our death is unknown, yet we pass it every year. A date that passes by unrecognised, despite its eventual significance.
Ring any bells with any of you?
I can’t even remember if the book was fact or fiction but I’m pretty sure male author and that the bit I’m interested in was at the start of a chapter.
Hi,
American Pullitzer prize-winning poet/author W.S. Merwin died a couple of weeks ago…
…IIRC, an obituary mentioned a collection of poems and prose(?), one of which was called “For The Anniversary Of My Death”.
The interweb tells me:
“Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what”
It may be that?
Close – the first two lines in particular – but no. I do wonder if the book I’m looking for referenced that poem though…
Is it “James and The Giant Peach”?
Aha! But no. Kinda Dahl-esque though, in a way.
What, full of lentils?
Pulse-related, certainly.
Leave Pink Floyd outta this, feller!
Might it be from “Being Dead” by Jim Crace? I read it when it came out and this passage did ring a vague bell.
No, I’ve not come across that before but have noted it as a future read – thanks.
Wonderful book, as is anything I’ve read by Jim Crace.
I think this is it:
“She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year. Her own birthday, and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought, one afternoon, that there was another date, of greater importance than all those; that of her own death; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it?”
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Is it this (Neil Tennant, the poem from his book of lyrics)?
every day it passes by
the day one year on which I’ll die
the date is not revealed to me
it keeps its secret patiently