Goodbye Mr. Updike

Pulitzer-winning author John Updike died Tuesday at his home in Massachusetts of lung cancer. He was 76 at the time of his passing.

"Requiem"

It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full of promise- depths unplumbable!
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know, "I thought he died a while ago."
For life's a shabby subterfuge, and death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register nowhere but where it will occur.

- J. Updike
from his yet to be published (Knopf) collection, "Endpoint".

WOW! May you rest in well deserved peace sir.