Kissed by world-shards,
Scarred by time-grains, time-dust.²
Since once on a time you were
Young, Sing of what’s taking place—
Speak to us, for a spell, confer your special Grace—³
Wisdom’s a gift but we’d change it for Youth—
Age is an honor, it’s still not the Truth—⁴
It’s not when you’ve lived a
Great many years that you get old—
It’s when you Forget being a child.⁵
Rheumy eyes see children play—see
Only Transience in their shrill elation
And wholehearted commitment to life:⁶
Bisected now by Bleaker Griefs,
We Envy the despair—that
Devastates the childhood realm—
So easy to repair—⁷
It’s as we go onward in life, when objects lose
A Freshness of hue and our souls a Delicacy of
Perception—that Beauty’s spirit is most Needed!⁸
An endless ego-existence would be far more
Dreadful than letting go the self in death—
To Rejoin Shared Eternal Being—⁹
Ancient Arms—to Infant Light!¹⁰
¹ Thomas Campian, Integer Vitae
² Paul Celan tr. Nikolai Popov & Heather McHugh, Flung Wood
³ Sappho tr. Aaron Poochigian, Because Once on a Time
⁴ Rostam Batmanglij, Ezra Koenig, & David Gates, Step
⁵ Valentin Rasputin tr. Eve Manning, French Lessons
⁶ Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
⁷ Emily Dickinson, Childhood Griefs
⁸ Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Artist of the Beautiful
⁹ Ursula K. Le Guin, Afterward to The Farthest Shore
¹⁰ Denise Levertov, Candlemas