Poetry Reading and After

Live long, aged poets For I am young and need your wisdom; Selfishly I ask for your Peace after experience, Smiles after love And bitter words, Patience that we young and under-sighted Will never know as young.         * Love, as we sniggered into the dusty room Lined with books and creaking chairs, We laughed because we were awkward Because we were embarrassed for their age. I am embarrassed for my youth. “Old age sticks –” my clever self thought; But here were no crabbed spirits, Here they had been stretched on the rack of life And were supple, pliant but not submissive To misfortune. Quietly, happily Stubbornly, gently Quiet and happy.         * Live long, aged poets For you have spent And saved and wasted And earned and lost And waste no time any more On earnings lost. You teach the upstart epithet-wit, You overpower the epitaph-irony With force of years lived and lessons learned And wisdom not free of sorrow But not removed from joy of friend, Memory of lovemaking, mourning With the dead, bright with the newborn. Oh, that we who will never know so much May live as long to know indeed, How not to know.

 

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