The Last Part of Pleasure
Timothy Bartel
“What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure… What it will be when I remember it as I lay down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then—that is the real meaning” – C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
My hands were slipping down your back—the oils
Of peppermint and coconut between
My thirty-one year fingers—when I knew:
I will never be young again. I will
Extend toward death, will shrink and wrinkle like
You will. We will not meet in pubs still new
To drink, like we once did, will not avoid,
In play, the first deep kiss, will not again
Depress the soft of twenty-year old skin.
I have been saving up experience
For then: when memory becomes advice,
Seen through the thin, dim filter of wide-open eyes,
For when we stretch our faces till they seem
A shadow of the skin of youth, then laugh,
Not wanting that and, wanting, laugh again.