Written by
Philip Larkin |
What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
Why aren't they screaming?
At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see.
It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here.
Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else.
And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone.
Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
How can they ignore it?
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside you head, and people in them, acting
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening.
That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give
An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here.
For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is.
This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground.
Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.
|
Written by
Julie Hill Alger |
The new war is a week old.
Bombs fall on Baghdad,
missiles on Tel Aviv.
The voice on the radio says
the armament dealers of Europe
are hopeful that a longer war
will be good for business.
They say, as fighting continues
there will be wear and tear
on matériel.
Spare parts
must be manufactured,
as well as replacements
for equipment blown apart,
shattered, set afire.
Prudently, the merchants
consult their spreadsheets.
They guard against euphoria
and prepare for a possible
downside to this bonanza:
the Allies are shooting
at their best customer,
Saddam Hussein.
If he loses
their market will be depressed.
There is also a danger of
restrictions on sales
to angry dictators.
Thus,
the longterm effects of the war
may not all be positive.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Mary and I were twenty-two
When we were wed;
A well-matched pair, right smart to view
The town's folk said.
For twenty years I have been true
To nuptial bed.
But oh alas! The march of time,
Life's wear and tear!
Now I am in my lusty prime
With pep to spare,
While she looks ten more years than I'm,
With greying hair.
'Twas on our trip dear friends among,
To New Orleans,
A stranger's silly trip of tongue
Kiboshed my dreams:
I heard her say: 'How very young
His mother seems.
'
Child-bearing gets a woman down,
And six had she;
Yet now somehow I feel a clown
When she's with me;
When cuties smile one cannot frown,
You must agree.
How often I have heard it said:
'For happy fate,
In age a girl ten years ahead
Should choose her mate.
'
Now twenty years to Mary wed
I know too late.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Each day I live I thank the Lord
I do the work I love;
And in it find a rich reward,
All price and praise above.
For few may do the work they love,
The fond unique employ,
That fits them as a hand a glove,
And gives them joy.
Oh gentlefolk, do you and you
Who toil for daily hire,
Consider that the job you do
Is to your heart's desire?
Aye, though you are to it resigned,
And will no duty shirk,
Oh do you in your private mind
Adore your work?
Twice happy man whose job is joy,
Whose hand and heart combine,
In brave and excellent employ
As radiantly as mine!
But oh the weary, dreary day,
The wear and tear and irk
Of countless souls who cannot say:
'I love my work.
'
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