that the rows of sunken horseshoe pits
with their rusty stakes, grown over with grass,
were like old graves, but I was not letting
my thoughts go there. Instead I was looking
with hope to a grapevine draped over
a fence in a neighboring yard, and knowing
that I could hold on. Yes, that was I.
And that was I, the round-shouldered man
you saw that afternoon in Rising City
as you drove past the abandoned Mini Golf,
fists deep in my pockets, nose dripping,
as I walked the miniature Main Street
peering into the child-size plywood store,
the poor red school, the faded barn, thinking
that not even in such an abbreviated world
with no more than its little events—the snap
of a grasshopper’s wing against a paper cup—
could a person control this life. Yes, that was I.
And that was I you spotted that evening
just before dark, in a weedy cemetery
west of Staplehurst, down on one knee
as if trying to make out the name on a stone,
some lonely old man, you thought, come there
to pity himself in a reliable sadness
of grass among graves, but that was not so.
Instead I had found in its perfect web
a handsome black and yellow spider
pumping its legs to try to shake my footing
as if I were a gift, an enormous moth
that it could snare and eat. Yes, that was I.
Ted Kooser
AFTER LONG SILENCE
Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.
W. B. Yeats
I DREAMED THAT I WAS OLD
I dreamed that I was old: in stale declension
Fallen from my prime, when company
Was mine, cat-nimbleness, and green invention,
Before time took my leafy hours away.
My wisdom, ripe with body’s ruin, found
Itself tart recompense for what was lost
In false exchange: since wisdom in the ground
Has no apocalypse or pentecost.
I wept for my youth, sweet passionate young thought,
And cozy women dead that by my side
Once lay: I wept with bitter longing, not
Remembering how in my youth I cried.
Stanley Kunitz
Mourning one’s lost youth is a familiar poetic trope. Late wisdom matters little; the cost of age weighs on the poet with no apparent compensatory gain. But then comes the final line.
“Apocalypse” and “pentecost” are biblical terms. “Apocalypse” means the complete and final destruction of the world, as described in the New Testament Book of Revelation. “Pentecost” is the Christian celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles.
CARPE DIEM
Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.
He waited (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
“Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure.”
The age-long theme is Age’s.
’Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing—
Robert Frost
Seize the day! We are constantly urged to live in the present moment. All well and good in theory, says Frost, but in reality impossible since the present overwhelms us. Virginia Woolf puts it this way: “The past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past” (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 3: 1925–1930).
THEY
I see you down there, white-haired
among the green leaves,
picking the ripe raspberries,
and I think, “Forty-two years!”
We are the you and I who were
once the they whom we remember.
Wendell Berry
The grand mystery of time and aging is expressed succinctly in this small gem of a poem whose colors—white and green and red—flash before our eyes.
WHY SHOULD NOT OLD MEN BE MAD?
Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher’s wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell,
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.
W. B. Yeats
FORGETFULNESS
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins
In this description of the slow slippage of memory, there is some comfort in knowing we have the delightful company of Collins
on the slide.
THERE’S THE RUB
Envying young poets the rage
You wish you could reverse your night
And blaze out born on every page
As old as them, as debut-bright.
Child of that prodigal spotlight
Whose wattage now is theirs to wage—
What gold star rite you wish you might
Raise revised to its first prize stage.
But listen to my wizened sage:
He claims there’s one disadvantage
Should time renew you neophyte—
There’d be one catch you’d hate, one spite:
Remember if you were their age
You’d have to write the way they write.
Bill Knott
Each generation creates its own vocabulary, its own currency. And each generation is in thrall to the language of its time.
YOUTH AND AGE
I remember when I was little and the world was great
A storm crashed the trees, lightnings vociferated,
Dark horror darkened the house, we descended
To the cellar in cold fear, in stupefying dread,
In wordless terror. I clung to the skirts of my mother.
Now I am old, and life continues, time is small.
Facing whatever may bring the end of the world
I have no better answer, now than then—
Blind clutches against the force of nature,
A wild glimpse, and poetry.
Richard Eberhart
Fearful of what the future may bring, both to himself and to the planet, the poet turns to poetry as a bulwark against despair.
WITH AGE WISDOM
At twenty, stooping round about,
I thought the world a miserable place,
Truth a trick, faith in doubt,
Little beauty, less grace.
Now at sixty what I see,
Although the world is worse by far,
Stops my heart in ecstasy.
God, the wonders that there are!
Archibald MacLeish
After serving in World War I, MacLeish believed that the conflict marked the ending of an old order and the beginning of a new, a hope that resulted in disappointment. This small poem may act as a reminder of the change of perspective that age can bring, whatever the current state of the world.
8
“A SOLACE OF RIPE PLUMS”
By the time we have reached the proverbial three score and ten and counting, even the most fortunate among us have known stress and sorrow. At these times, assailed by events outside ourselves or demons within, we cast about for sources of consolation that can support and sustain us.
Among these sources is poetry. Poets who have found themselves in similar situations write in ways that connect to our own experience and may provide an expansion of our own understanding. It may be as simple as the taste of a ripe plum in William Carlos Williams’s poem or as counterintuitive as the “banalities” of a poor island town as seen by Derek Walcott. To sit with a friend and read poems aloud to each other is a wonderful way to cope with a gray day.
Humor especially can lift us out of self-pity and depression; never discount the power of laughter, even in the hardest times. Thus we begin this section with two poems that, even as they deal with weighty matters, do so in a lighthearted style.
QUIET
Prolonged exposure to death
Has made my friend quieter.
Now his nose is less like a hatchet
And more like a snuffler.
Flames don’t erupt from his mouth anymore
And life doesn’t crack his thermometer.
Instead of overthrowing the government
He reads fly-fishing catalogues
And takes photographs of water.
An aphorist would say
The horns of the steer have grown straighter.
He has an older heart
That beats younger.
His Attila the Hun imitation
Is not as good as it used to be.
Everything else is better.
Tony Hoagland
A FINISHED MAN
Of the four louts who threw him off the dock
Three are now dead, and so more faintly mock
The way he choked and splashed and was afraid.
His memory of the fourth begins to fade.
It was himself whom he could not forgive;
Yet it has been a comfort to outlive
That woman, stunned by his appalling gaffe,
Who with a napkin half-suppressed her laugh,
Or that grey colleague, surely gone by now,
Who, turning toward the window, raised his brow,
Embarrassed to have caught him in a lie.
All witness darkens, eye by dimming eye.
Thus he can walk today with heart at ease
Through the old quad, escorted by trustees,
To dedicate the monumental gym
A grateful college means to name for him.
Seated, he feels the warm sun sculpt his cheek
As the young president gets up to speak.
If the dead die, if he can but forget,
If money talks, he may be perfect yet.
Richard Wilbur
PROVIDE, PROVIDE
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew,
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!
Robert Frost
Frost’s wry New England voice comes through here in this satirical prescription for dealing with the inevitable losses of old age.
Abishag was the young beauty chosen to serve the biblical king and psalmist David in his old age. Among her duties was to lie next to him in bed in order to keep him warm.
COUNTRY STARS
The nearsighted child has taken off her glasses
and come downstairs to be kissed goodnight.
She blows on a black windowpane until it’s white.
Over the apple trees a great bear passes
but she puts her own construction on the night.
Two cities, a chemical plant, and clotted cars
breathe our distrust of darkness on the air,
clouding the pane between us and the stars.
But have no fear, or only proper fear:
the bright watchers are still there.
William Meredith
This poem was published in 1976. Since then the world has undergone cataclysmic changes. What now is “proper fear”?
WHY WE MUST STRUGGLE
If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double, how
we can feed
as upon nectar
upon need?
Kay Ryan
ALLEGRO
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.
The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.
The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no tax to Caesar.
I shove my hands in my haydnpockets
and act like a man who is calm about it all.
I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”
The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;
rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.
The rocks roll straight through the house
but every pane of glass is still whole.
Tomas Tranströmer
(translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)
Music can reach us in our deepest being, even in times of greatest despair. Tranströmer suffered a paralytic stroke in 1990 and lost his power of speech, but went on writing poetry until his death twenty-five years later.
TO A POOR OLD WOMAN
munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her
You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her
William Carlos Williams
CONSOLATION
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hill towns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.