"For my daughter in reply to a question"

 

"We’re not going to die.
We’ll find a way.
We’ll breathe deeply
and eat carefully.
We’ll think always on life.
There’ll be no fading for you or for me.
We’ll be the first
and we’ll not laugh at ourselves ever
and your children will be my grandchildren.
Nothing will have changed
except by addition.
There’ll never be another as you
and never another as I.
No one ever will confuse you
nor confuse me with another.
We will not be forgotten and passed over
and buried under the births and deaths to come."

by David Ignatow

{Good poems for hard times, selecção e introdução de Garrison Keillor, Viking, Nova Iorque, 2005, p. 13}