Tag Archives: Legacy

PROMPT: Legacy

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Daily writing prompt
What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
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If “legacy” is defined as something left behind that serves to keep one’s memory alive, then I don’t. I think that goal is futile, illusory, and a bit narcissistic. Even those who are “remembered” long after their deaths are not truly remembered. For example, the Alexander the Great who is remembered to this day likely bears little resemblance to the one who was flesh and blood. What we remember are products of imagination. [Which is fine, but then why tie them to people who lived as opposed to purely fictional ones?]

If I could leave behind some configuration of knowledge of the art of human living that would be helpful to anyone (without it being tied to my identity or memory) that would be a fine thing.

“Night Travels” by Du Fu [w/ Audio]

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Slender grass waves in a light breeze;
   Tall-masted boat rocks in the night.
 Stars hang low, over the vast plain;
   The river moon struggles for height.
 I'll never gain fame by the brush --
   Too old for civil service posts...
 Wading, wading, what am I like?
    A sandpiper on the mud coast!

The original in Chinese (Title: 旅夜書懷):

細草微風岸， 
危檣獨夜舟。 
星垂平野闊， 
月湧大江流。 
名豈文章著， 
官應老病休。 
飄飄何所似， 
天地一沙鷗。

This is Poem 113 of “Three Hundred Tang Poems,” i.e. 唐诗三百首

Sonnet 3 by William Shakespeare [w/ Audio]

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Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewst,
 Now is the time that face should form another,
 Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
 Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
 For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
 Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
 Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
 Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
 Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
 Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
 So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
 Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
   But if thou live rememb'rd not to be,
   Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

PROMPT: Named After

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If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

Maybe an atomic bomb. It would be nice to get in the last word.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley [w/ Audio]

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I met a traveller from an antique land
   Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
 Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
   Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
   Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
 Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
   The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
 And on the pedestal these words appear:
   "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
   Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
   The lone and level sands stretch far away.

POEM: Legacy

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i blacked out on the launch pad
so, if you came to see me soar
sorry you had to hear me snore
i’ll not, today, become the fad

i remember my dear, old dad
he broke the very speed of sound
but I can’t claim I was around
i’d trotted off to Leningrad

but powering down made me glad
i can’t rocket into that cold night
a tragic rider with Quixote’s sight
my only hope lies in going mad

what great men have gone this way
cursing in the light of day