Our final measure of Updike in 'Endpoint and Other Poems'
Novelist and critic John Updike also was a poet. His newly published final collection, Endpoint and Other Poems (Knopf, $25), was completed just weeks before his death Jan. 27 at age 76. It deals with aging, death and golf, as well as flying to Florida.
Flying to Florida
At Gate 16, one man is wearing sandals
though this is Boston, with a foot of snow;
toes tanned beneath their hair, he flexes them
as if in sand already. Apparel runs
to sweatpants, Nikes, nylon windbreakers.
Above our grizzled heads canned CNN
babbles half-inaudibly. For this
we braved security, smirking, afraid?
The beeping portal, the belt of x-rayed bags —
we passed their tests, to fly. What have we done
to earn eternal youth? Nothing so great —
been born American, put in our time.
Now, aged, average, dullish, lame, and halt,
we claim our due, our fun doom in the sun.
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