Promise not to dwell too much more on this whole getting old thing as a result of my turning 64. However, got one more item for you here via this Washington Post article I recently saw on Donald Hall (click here.) Click on video below to hear him recite the following poem.
One comment though. I fully understand Donald’s lines about how women-come-and-women-go; but the business of him losing an old friend of 30 years took me a little by surprise. Also made me wonder, what the hell happened?
Affirmation
To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.
https://dailymotion.com/video/xduzcn
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xduzcn_donald-hall-affirmation_creation” target=”_blank”>Donald Hall – Affirmation
by http://www.dailymotion.com/poetictouch” target=”_blank”>