I was looking through a box of papers and came across a poem that I had scribbled down from a book. It was from 1998 from the Blue Moon Bookstore in Asheville, N.C. and it was the English translation to a poem by the French writer Rabelais.

Here it is:

Let life laugh loud, since laugh it must

Before it seals our months with dust

Let life laugh when it shall laugh

Our simple mutual epitaph

For we shall be together, friend.

It is yours as well as mine, this end of old obscenities and young

So laugh until your bell has rung

No more compete, no more compare

But gaily seize in empty air

These moments grace you or me

In which to tease eternity

O laugh your very loveliest

For both of us!

And may your zest

Loosen one last coil in my dead throat!

So have I lived and so I wrote.