The Beggar's Opera

Godfrey Kneller, painting of an unknown man traditionally identified as John Gay

Life is a Jest, and all Things show it,

I thought so once, but now I know it.

—John Gay (1685–1732), epitaph on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, written by himself

What's memory? And is it time?

Or are we time—memory, its line?

The past is just a blurry face.

The joke's in the bits that we embrace,

The dead we loved, the going style.

Gay little knew what Brecht and Weill

Would make of his Opera and his wit,

And would he have approved of it?

Nobody’s best is ever good enough,

Some of us realize that; others don’t.

I’ve lived my life incompetently.

Signaling from around the bend, there’s nobody.

This should be the final line. It won’t.

Envoi

L’Opéra de quat’sous

in Malakoff—hard for me and you,

my dear, our French not up to it—

one staging post that I recall

on this long road into the Fall.

Friday, February 20, 2026