“Excuse my dust,” the epitaph

that Dorothy Parker proposed be hers,

doesn’t make me cry but laugh.

Posthumously, cris de coeurs

should all like Dorothy’s be modest.

Not treated as gods, men scoff,

as will women who aren’t goddessed,

but once we’ve all been dusted off

by the Reaper who is grim

all about which we once fussed

we’ll see as merely an ad interim

stop-gap to eternal dust,

life, sharing that same brevity

that is the soul of lingerie,

as she declared with levity,

before death’s lethal injury

did away with her at seventy,

unlike soulful lingerie her life

not short, like cream with Devon tea

her wit as cutting as a knife.

David B. Green writes about Dorothy Parker in the August 22, 2013 Haaretz ( This day in Jewish history: Birth of a writer with wit: Dorothy Parker, known for her clever quips and dedication to civil rights, suffered a desperately unhappy personal life)”:

August 22, 1893, was the birthdate of Dorothy Parker, the writer and wit who achieved legendary status not only for her clever, sharp-edged and concise quips, rhymes and comebacks, but also for her political outspokenness on behalf of human rights, and a desperately unhappy personal life.

It was Parker who, when she and her companions at the Algonquin Hotel Round Table were informed in 1933 that the notoriously bland and laconic former president Calvin Coolidge had died, wondered aloud, “How could they tell?” It was she who, as drama critic of Vanity Fair, warned theater-goers who might be considering attending one less-than scintillating production, “If you don’t knit, bring a book.” But it was also Parker who wrote the poem “Resume” (1926), in which she explained why one carries on with it all:

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)