On the deathbed,
a war between rage
(at all the opportunities missed to bellow one's name)
and acceptance
(of the certainty that all the times one did were in vain).

I have not found a suitable name for myself
to degrade the clarity of the unreceptive
with an idiosyncratic nomenclature—
can this explain or justify my frailty and powerlessness?

Young-me looks past me in one direction,
Old-me in the other:
neither really sees me,
intent as they are on farther horizons.

Are these, then, the years of don't-matter?