Written during depression, How To Be Happy.
To be happy, a man must love death and failure.
Then, however great the flash of this moment or that bit
of life's work, there will come always
another moment to be appreciated because fading or crumbling.
If however, a man loves life there can be no end to it,
nor hope.
If a man loves reason, eventually he will find none.
If he loves the interest of others,
he will be made to apologize continually for his own being.
If he loves form, all that he does or knows
will come not to nothing, but to that other possibility
of meaninglessness, everything.
That is why the shape of things to come
is a phrase littered with tracks into the bush, where
the pure primitive is a headhunters delusion and why,
my dear, I love you.
Either the poem worked or that's a really cheap ending.