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Robert Lindner
We Were Invincible
“April, come she will. May, she will stay.
June, she’ll change her tune. July, she will fly.
August, die she must. September, I remember”
“April, Come She Will” by Paul Simon (1964)
Another September
Is passing by and so I remember
1964, when
I was young. That was then
And now time once again
Drags us toward another December
In 1964,
When Simon wrote the song, it was before
That song would reappear,
Flash in another year,
In a movie, but we’re
Here in 1964 and the score
Of “The Graduate” will
Have to wait for ’68, but we still
Would be a graduate
In ’64 and get
Past high school, when sunset
Came to times when we were invincible.
We were invincible
And we flashed brilliantly, as youth will.
But time passed by and we
Found youth was memory
And found life’s energy
Was in the sunset just over the hill,
Still flashing, but waning
In strength, though the memories containing
The matter that became
Our existence, that same
Matter that has our name,
Is still mainly here inside, sustaining
Us. Time tells what we will
Be, and what we were and what we are still
In the flashing moment
That is the brief present
That became us and went
By when we were young and invincible.
But now we look and laugh
When we see our youth in a photograph
With our favorite dish
Making a birthday wish
So young and so foolish
Just a flash before our epitaph.
Then “April, come she will.”
This song becomes an epitaph that still
Records an existence
That passed without the sense
Of its impermanence
That ends with “I Was Not Invincible.”
“May, she will stay.
June, she’ll change her tune. July, she will fly.
August, die she must. September, I remember”
The flash of existence,
That’s the ephemeral impermanence
Called a life. So we come
And go and we’re the sum
Of our memories from
The Graduate become “The Sounds of Silence”
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