I’m going out for a stroll and a bite and won’t take myself with me.
Look after me while I’m gone, will you.

Suddenly I’m ready to eat the world,
Starting with the food on my plate.
The waiter asks if everything’s all right.

When even getting a haircut seems too much,
And trimming your toenails and fingernails takes too much strength,
When more than you have is what’s required,

The time is coming when it won’t be maintenance.
The time is coming when it won’t be minimal.
I walk with my long-dead dog up a hill.

The ringing telephone sobs to be picked up and when I do 
It’s someone I love but don’t see anymore,
Calling from her car to ask 

I live a life of appetite and, yes, that’s right,
I live a life of privilege in New York,

At seventy-seven I reached my prime.
But seventy-eight was also absolutely great.
And then came fab seventy-nine and continuing to climb.

Afternoon’s hundreds under the Citicorp on the platform-
feverish underworld over the molten core of the world.

And upstairs: rock stars, dictators,
complexly drawn women in armor,
the dead, the poor, and so and so—

And your death taught its debt
who escaped your life?