POEM FOR OLD MEN

GETTING OLD is much harder than growing up, and doing both at the same time (witness me) is murder. I was cycling back (uphill) from the village this week and began to compose a poem about the shame of age, the inevitable self-flagellation that goes with reviewing life with any kind of clarity. Bad idea, but insuperable.

HELL ROCKER

GOD PUNISHES old men,
Year by year rebuilding
The boy-skill of fantasy
To mercilessly efficient
Memory,
Indexing all our sins
Of vanity and cowardice
For rapid recall
Retrieval, review,
In collated sequences
Demonstrating our lack
Of grace in learning
Simplicity.
So an unguarded word
Of pique precedes
A tragic avalanche of
Hopeless recollection
Punitively complete
In every torturing
Detail of scent and texture.
(Could the skin beneath
Her ear have been
That soft and
Fragrant?)
In this efficient way
We pay and repay for
Sins exponentially
In proportion to
Repetition.
Alas, God is just,
And God recycles.
Perhaps shame hunches
Old men’s shoulders
More than years.
Sitting quiet on porches
(Avoiding avalanche),
Rocking,
We burn.


June 2010

BRAXINOSO SPEAKS

I've seen to Himself for so many years that I know what will work and what won't. I've never found a workable ploy that can turn him away from the anger he feels for his younger self. Yet we were all young, presumably we all made mistakes, perhaps none of us were as careful or even as ethical as we might have been. The difference is that Himself has a first rate memory, and that he is a damn good editor. He sees the flaws, yearns and burns to correct them with some cosmic blue pencil, yet can't touch the ms. No one's arms are long enough to revise his own story. I persist in my hope of finding some balm for his conscience, and in helping him lay down his guilt as I've helped him with more mundane matters. In for a penny, in for a pound. Himself is not a simple job.