Death Clock Ticker

And since to look at things on Broome
Thirty springs is little room
About Nolita I will go
To see Kate Spade’s new rattan totes

I am going to die on Monday, July 12th, 2032.

This death clock ticker is surprisingly comforting. It reminds me of the AE Houseman poem, Loveliest of Trees, whose nursery rhyme beat hides the precocious wisdom of a twenty-year-old who understands he won’t live forever. No speeding around the cliffs of Monte Carlo in a sportscar for Houseman: he’s going to do the English equivalent of Vermont leaf-peeping instead. And more power to him.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.