I learned years after it happened <br />This this distant name had killed himself. <br />It was Ken who told me <br />What had happened, <br />Robert Leslie taught <br />It takes so much desperation <br />For this event. <br />The words of Jesus came: <br />"Forgive them they know not <br />What they do." <br />I was Y he was M or N <br />We knew each other <br />But we didn't know. <br />In a roadside break down situation <br />If there had been recognition <br />We would have stopped to help. <br />It makes me sad to think <br />With well less than one hundred <br />We didn't know a thing about each other, <br />Only a name. <br />There was so much busyness <br />So many other trajectories <br />Even in rural upstate new york <br />Not too far from Cornell's libraries <br />Where I did almost all my papers.<br /><br />Bill Grace<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-daily-doggerel-on-a-class-mate-s-distant-suicide/
