To The Generation Too Far to Know

This writing will most likely be forgotten, if not soon then soon enough.
Its letters will be on this page, maybe, hopefully, a few more
Then be crumpled up, torn, trashed and let go from the memory.
It happens to everything that has been written and will happen again to everything that is.
Shakespeare's human will come to an end, so too will the roads of the Beats,
The echoes of the canyon bards, the whispers of the bum poets.
All will be given a final blink, a note on heard.
So be it.

There will be far more people who won't read this poem than will
There may already be more dead folk through the centuries
Than there ever will be live folk who can read this.

To those who I cannot touch, who I can't hope to imagine
I give to you my hopes,
That you might do something grand and great
And know things that are small and their strengths
That you might be loved and give love
That the words that bruise our skin,
Racism, zeen-o-foe-be-ya, sexism, apartheid,
Perjury, theft, prudishness,
And all the rest,
Will be too ancient for proper translation;
That you might love with your touch and with your mind,
That you might see the Sun wider than the Earth's orbit
And know all you need to know, do all you need to do
And be all you need to be.