Like a vigorous farmer the intravenous bottle was watering my arid land,
While the mask guarded the gates of my soul,
And the nurse stood beside my bed like a sunflower plant
Gazing upon the charts on my bed side.

Upon this life of man I sat to ponder.
Who can stop the wheel of Time?
Who can tell his span, I wonder!
Or against the tide can climb?

And older and older we have to grow;
Though some untimely depart;
And in our bodies bacteria flow.
Is it our frailty, or our fate?
One wonders who'd know?

And now and then we’re driven to a clinic,
For faults to fix in the physique;
To fill in a hole or bolt a leak,
Like as a car we take to a mechanic.
And year after year its faults increase:
No clutch would gear, or wheels to bear,
And cracks would widen and the horn would moan,
And the engine loses its tune.

When the mechanic is helpless,
And could fix it up no more
We call a truck and close the door:
It comes and lifts the dead car high
And dump it in symmetry.