Simplify Me When I'm Dead

 Remember me when I am dead
 and simplify me when I'm dead.

 As the processes of earth
 strip off the colour and the skin
 take the brown hair and the blue eye

 and leave me simpler than at birth,
 when hairless I came howling in
 as the moon came in the cold sky.

 Of my skeleton perhaps
 so stripped, a learned man will say
 "He was of such a type and intelligence," no more.

 Thus when in a year collapse
 particular memories, you may
 deduce, from the long pain I bore

 the opinions I held, who was my foe
 and what I left, even my appearance
 but incidents will be no guide.

 Time's wrong-way telescope will show
 a minute man ten years hence
 and by distance simplified.

 Through that lens see if I seem
 substance or nothing: of the world
 deserving mention or charitable oblivion

 not by momentary spleen
 or love into decision hurled
 leisurely arrive at an opinion.

 Remember me when I am dead
 and simplify me when I'm dead.
                --Keith Douglas