And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your
heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

John Updike - American short story writer, poet, and novelist John Updike was born March 10, 1932 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His parents were diligent about his education, and in 1950 he received a scholarship for study at Harvard University, graduating in 1954. He worked for the New Yorker for two years before deciding to devote himself exclusively to his own writing but has remained a frequent contributor of stories and poems to that magazine. In 1959, he published his first story collection, The Same Door, and his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair. In 1960, with Rabbit, Run, he began his extensive Rabbit chronicles. In 1981 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Is Rich. His collected poems were published in 1993, and he is continually productive in writing new stories and poems. Updike writes mainly about the lives of ordinary people in small-town Pennsylvania settings. Today he is considered one of the best of America's major writers of fiction and poetry. (If you'd like to listen to a little clip of Garrison Keillor reading this poem and a few others click here.)