Talkin’ ’bout our degeneration

Earl Fowler

A famous question asked in Ernest Hemingway’s early modernist novel, The Sun Also Rises, goes like this: “How did you go bankrupt?”

Answer: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

That remains as true as it was when the book was released 98 years ago. It’s also, it seems to me, an apt description of how old people wither and senesce.

We witnessed the sagging decline, then accelerated disintegration, of our parents’ generation. Now we’re seeing it in ours. We grow old … we grow old. We shall wear the bottoms of our bellbottoms rolled.

There’s something happening here, children, but what it is ain’t exactly clear. Irish novelist John McGahern summarized our trip between the forceps and the stone this way in The Pornographer: “The christening party becomes the funeral, the shudder that makes us flesh becomes the shudder that makes us meat.”

Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov put it thus in the memoir Speak, Memory: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

Same idea from Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in Waiting for Godot: “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”

An even more bracing, 2,000-year-old take from Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger in his essay De Brevitate Vitae: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it. … Life is long if you know how to use it.”   

Seneca’s words are as incisive today as when he first took his calamus to a papyrus scroll. But even granting what he says — heck, especially because we waste so much time on trivialities — this business of aging is kind of a drag. Bummer.

As one ages, the rising costs of fidget blankets, dual-bar bed rails and Werther’s Originals ($6.49 for a shrinking bag!) are vexatious enough. But the real hitch I’m talking about here — a lament shared by billions — is the one voiced by Shakespeare’s Cleopatra in her last hour: “I have immortal longings in me.”

Alas, you don’t get a mulligan on the tee shot of life. As Senegalese writer Mohamed Mbougar Sarr notes in his wonderful story “Ami Police,” GPS is clueless when you’re prompted to plug in your destination and all you can come up with is: “The Past.”

Omar Khayyam laid out time’s arrow a millennium ago, rendered beautifully in the classic English translation of the Rubaiyat by Edward FitzGerald: “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

In a series of obeisances to the inevitable, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. I have lingered in the chambers of the sea. And the crack in the tea-cup (that’s how the light gets in) opens a lane to the scratch-ticket kiosk at the Uptown Mall. (You never chafe your scratch cards when you’re sittin’ at the food court. There’ll be time enough for scratchin’ when the taco’s done.)

Inevitably, such melancholy meditations on meaty mortality from Prufrock & Sons steer me toward 10 prized poems (one is really a song) about the inexorable crumbling, declining, fading, fermenting, maturing, mellowing, slumping and waning that awaits us all. Gradually, then suddenly. Pace Robert Browning, some take issue with the optimistic notion that the best is yet to be:

10. John Crowe Ransom: Blue Girls

Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward

Under the towers of your seminary,

Go listen to your teachers old and contrary

Without believing a word.

Tie the white fillets then about your hair

And think no more of what will come to pass

Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass

And chattering on the air.

Practise your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;

And I will cry with my loud lips and publish

Beauty which all our powers shall never establish,

It is so frail.

For I could tell you a story which is true;

I know a lady with a terrible tongue,

Blear eyes fallen from blue,

All her perfections tarnished — yet it is not long

Since she was lovelier than any of you.

Moral: While you’ve got it, flaunt it. Hold onto sixteen as long as you can. Your childless cat lady, postmenopausal female purpose is calling.

9. Thomas Hardy: I Look Into My Glass

I look into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,

And say, ‘Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!’

For then I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

  With throbbings of noontide.

Moral: There’s no fool like a romantically inclined old fool with a throbbing latex allergy. Cleanup on Aisle 9.

8. W. B. Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,

— Those dying generations — at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Moral, as distilled by Leonard Cohen: “If you are the dealer, let me out of the game.” Speaking of which:

7. Leonard Cohen: You Want It Darker

If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game

If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame

If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame

You want it darker

We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified

Be the holy name

Vilified, crucified

In the human frame

A million candles burning

For the help that never came

You want it darker

Hineni, hineni

I’m ready, my Lord

There’s a lover in the story

But the story’s still the same

There’s a lullaby for suffering

And a paradox to blame

But it’s written in the scriptures

And it’s not some idol claim

You want it darker

We kill the flame

They’re lining up the prisoners

And the guards are taking aim

I struggle with some demons

They were middle class and tame

I didn’t know I had permission

To murder and to maim

You want it darker

Hineni, hineni

I’m ready, my Lord

Magnified, sanctified

Be the holy name

Vilified, crucified

In the human frame

A million candles burning

For the love that never came

You want it darker

We kill the flame

If you are the dealer, let me out of the game

If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame

If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame

You want it darker

Hineni, hineni

Hineni, hineni

I’m ready, my Lord

Moral: It’s closing time.

6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Youth and Age

Verse, a breeze mild blossoms straying,

Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee —

Both were mine! Life went a-maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young!

When I was young? — Ah, woful When!

Ah! for the change ’twixt Now and Then!

This breathing house not built with hands,

This body that does me grievous wrong,

O’er aery cliffs and glittering sands,

How lightly then it flashed along:—

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide,

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind or weather

When Youth and I lived in’t together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O! the joys, that came down shower-like,

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere,

Which tells me, Youth’s no longer here!

O Youth! for years so many and sweet,

’Tis known, that Thou and I were one,

I’ll think it but a fond conceit —

It cannot be that Thou art gone!

Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll’d: —

And thou wert aye a masker bold!

What strange disguise hast now put on,

To make believe, that thou are gone?

I see these locks in silvery slips,

This drooping gait, this altered size:

But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!

Life is but thought: so think I will

That Youth and I are house-mates still.

Dew-drops are the gems of morning,

But the tears of mournful eve!

Where no hope is, life’s a warning

That only serves to make us grieve,

When we are old:

That only serves to make us grieve

With oft and tedious taking-leave,

Like some poor nigh-related guest,

That may not rudely be dismist;

Yet hath outstay’d his welcome while,

And tells the jest without the smile.

Moral: As distilled by George Burns: “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.” Coleridge’s even terser take: “Youth and I are house-mates still.”

5. Philip Larkin: Dockery and Son

‘Dockery was junior to you,

Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’   

Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do

You keep in touch with —’ Or remember how   

Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight   

We used to stand before that desk, to give   

‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’?   

I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.

A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.   

Canal and clouds and colleges subside

Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,   

Anyone up today must have been born

In ’43, when I was twenty-one.

If he was younger, did he get this son

At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms

With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows   

How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose

I fell asleep, waking at the fumes

And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed,   

And ate an awful pie, and walked along   

The platform to its end to see the ranged   

Joining and parting lines reflect a strong

Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife,   

No house or land still seemed quite natural.   

Only a numbness registered the shock   

Of finding out how much had gone of life,   

How widely from the others. Dockery, now:   

Only nineteen, he must have taken stock

Of what he wanted, and been capable

Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how

Convinced he was he should be added to!

Why did he think adding meant increase?

To me it was dilution. Where do these

Innate assumptions come from? Not from what   

We think truest, or most want to do:

Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style   

Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,

Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got

And how we got it; looked back on, they rear   

Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying   

For Dockery a son, for me nothing,

Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage.   

Life is first boredom, then fear.

Whether or not we use it, it goes,

And leaves what something hidden from us chose,   

And age, and then the only end of age.

Moral: Hickory, dockery, grouse, the clock grinds up the mouse. Whether or not we use it, it goes.

4. Jenny Joseph: Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people’s gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Moral: Purple haze, all in my brain.

3. Fleur Adcock: Mrs Baldwin

And then there’s the one about the old woman

who very apologetically asks the way

to Church Lane, adding ‘I ought to know:

I’ve lived there since the war’. So you go with her.

This comes with variations, usually leading

(via a list of demented ancestors)

to calculations of how much time you’ve got

before you’re asking the way to your own house.

But it’s not so often that you find the one

about how, whenever you hear of someone

diagnosed with cancer, you have to hide

that muffled pang that clutched you, at fifteen,

when you saw Pauline Edwards holding hands

with the boy from the Social Club you’d always fancied.

Moral: Better to lose your body than your mind, your life than your grip.

2. William Shakespeare: Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west;

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Moral, as decanted by Don Paterson into Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets: “The more decrepit I look, the more you’ll love me, as this reminds you that I’ll be gone before you are.”

I keep trying to sell that bit of wisdom from dear old Bill to my beloved, but turns out she’s far more appreciative of another Father William — the one who shows up in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s poem is a parody of a Robert Southey didactic thumper (“The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them”) that was well-known to Victorian children but now deservedly forgotten.

1. Lewis Carroll: You Are Old, Father William

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,

“And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

    Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,

    “I feared it might injure the brain;

But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

    Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,

    And have grown most uncommonly fat;

Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door —

    Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

    “I kept all my limbs very supple

By the use of this ointment — one shilling the box —

    Allow me to sell you a couple.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak

    For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak —

    Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,

    And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,

    Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose

    That your eye was as steady as ever;

Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose —

    What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”

    Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

    Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”

Moral: If one may be so impertinent as to tag on a couple of verses consistent with the general tenor of this blog ...

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,

“And your knees clearly creak when you walk;

Does it pain you, dear sir, that the years have been rough?

Tell me truly, does getting old suck?”

“It is true,” said the sage, with a sigh and a shrug,

“That these aches are not fun, nor is sleep all that sound;

But the friends that I’ve gained from a life lived so long,

Make me smile through it all, and I needn’t expound.”