Dates

National Review, Jan 29, 2007 by Lee Oser

DATES

   Dates come and go,
   Slip the mind
   And drip from stone.

   They start as someone else's dates
   But soon become our own.

   Like coughs from rows of faces
   Below the Philharmonic,
   The dates record the traces
   Of beings not Platonic.

   Do writers and engravers
   Use parentheses
   To hush the sleepless fear of death
   Or to give the dead some peace?

--LEE OSER