did you get what you wanted from this life and so,

[sadcat]

please help...i heard a snippet of a poem on the vanessa feltz radio programme on bbc london. It had the lines, did you get what you wanted from this life and so, I wanted to be beloved. if anyone knows the rest or the author it would be much apprieciated as a very dear friend has died and i would like to read it at his funeral. thank you.

[starmack]

Hi sadcat
This sounds (vaguely I admit) like the late and final works of Raymond Carver, an American poet and short story writer who died of cancer maybe 15 years ago.
He was married to a wonderful poet called Tess Gallagher and it sounds (vaguely) like something he wrote to her...
Long shot: Check a Raymond Carver book called "New Path to the Waterfall."
Longer shot: check a valedictory poem titled "Hummingbird," written by Raymond Carver. Check that poem anyway if you wish to read something at a funeral of someone close.
If I am wrong on those longshots I would be thinking of a great American writer toni Morrison who wrote a book "Beloved," which I have not read.
I will come back if I think of anything more

[starmack]

Hi sadcat
Me again. Yeah. Found your poem!

It is the final poem written by Raymond Carver to his beloved Tess Gallagher. They were both american poets. It is a short poem titled "LATE FRAGMENT" as follows:-

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

The poem features in the book, final page, of "New Path To The Waterfall," 1989 publisher: USA was Atlantic Monthly Press, which is my copy bought here in Ireland, ewhere Tess Gallagher has spent part of her time. I am certain it was published more recently in UK. The book is dedicted: Tess. Tess. Tess. Tess

In her introduction to the American edition Tess Gallagher concluded: ".....what is sure is that he wrote and lived his last ten years by his own design, and as his companion in that life, I'm glad to have helped him keep his poetry alive for the journey, for the comofrt and soul-making he drew from it so crucially in his too-early going."

Hope this is of some help to you in more senses than one.