Poem by Derek Mahon

Can't find the book this poem comes from; it's somewhere among the piles

I have long loved this poem by the Irish poet Derek Mahon, but I always have to look up the word "imprevisable," even though its meaning is detectable from its spelling. It means "lacking predictability," but also can mean voluble, or "moving quickly from solid or liquid to vapor." I think maybe Mahon/Horace meant it to be read both ways, even though the meanings are, in this context, contradictory: that is, certainly the future is unpredictable, except that we will all change from our bodies of mass and water into vapor, into dust. But this is a happy poem with a message of embracing life in moments, as it happens, and not worrying yourself too much. I love "the days are more fun than the years..." Decant your wine.

How to Live
(Horace, Odes, Book One, II)

Don't waste your time, Leuconoe, living in fear and hope
of the imprevisable future; forget the horoscope.
Accept whatever happens. Whether the gods allow
us fifty winters more or drop us at this one now
which flings the high Tyrrhenian waves on the stone piers,
decant your wine: the days are more fun than the years
which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest
one day at a time, and never mind the rest.
                                                       - Derek Mahon