ON BLESSINGS OF OLD AGE !
FEW POETIC REFLECTIONS ON OLD AGE
Dear Poet Friends, after a long break, I have composed a few lines as a very senior citizen and a lover of poetry. If you like the same, kindly Re-post this Poem for wider circulation. Thanks and best wishes, - Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
ON BLESSINGS OF OLD AGE!
From the impressionable age of my childhood days,
I have finally arrived at the vulnerable period of old age!
It has been often been said that old age is that period of life,
When all bad habits are given up on doctor’s advice,
And yet you don’t feel all that good while you survive!
Yet I do try to take some solace from Robert Browning’s poem
‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’ which says;-
‘’Grow old along with me!
For the best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.’’
Despite my grey hairs and wrinkled face,
With creaking joints and scattered aches and pains,
‘’Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress’’,
In thanks giving to the Lord and sings his praise;
As I recall WB Yeats’ ‘Sailing Byzantium’, - that
lovely poem from my college days.
As our biological clock continues to tick incessantly,
Getting older becomes compulsory.
But becoming Wiser in wrinkled years remains optional,
A choice our free will has the opportunity to make!
I recall what Agatha Christie had once said,
That an archaeologist is the best husband a woman can get,
For the older she gets, the more interested in her he
becomes;
With due respect to our women whose age is impolite
not ask.
Here I recall what the Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost
had once said,
That a diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s
birthday and not her age.
I recall the observation of Sartre the famous French philosopher
who had said,
That more sand that escapes from the hourglass of our life,
The clearer we should see through it as a blessing of time!
It is true that we live in deeds, not in years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial, - as James Bailey had said.
I finally conclude by quoting the first stanza from ‘Beautiful Old Age’ by DH Lawrence;
‘’It ought to be lovely to be old
To be full of the peace that comes of experience
And wrinkled ripe fulfilment.’’
-Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
Written by
RAJ NANDY NEW DELHI