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Old people. Life leads up to them, then pauses.
It can go no further, instead marks time
in more measured stillness; frame and skin
are turning to stone, thoughts to butterflies
flitting over the lapidary coolness.
The superstructure of the world before our eyes
dismantled in each old face, yet is youthful,
is born aloft in healthy vision, sharp hearing,
perfection of imagery our instrumentality
defaults from at any age, never mind senility.
The world is its youth. We are old already,
weary of things, the bright rising is the sun,
the earth’s fullness the witness to our lack,
the mirror image for a while convincing.
We are outstripped, the world is unchanging.
A coming of age. A coming of the world.
Lo, it moves within our blood and brains,
it constructs itself, a shrine to its long life,
then it discards us, who were never it at all,
who were it, then watch it pass, living still. |
