Requiem

I haven't read any Updike ever, which is a shame.
I grew up in India and British writers were better known than American ones.
Well, that's my theory at least.
Anyway, here's something Updike wrote in one of his last poems (featured in the collection "Endpoint and Other Poems.")
It's reads true for every writer, struggling or not.

For who really cares about writers.

It came to me the other day:

Were I to die, no one would say,
"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!"
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
"I thought he died a while ago."
For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
— JOHN UPDIKE