These are the middle years, and I attend
Experience and the dying of the heart.
I don’t feel melancholy. The idea of an end
To the world that I am cheers me up.
Only I used to feel, before, what now I know.
Enjoying more, I care for less and less,
And cherish what I do not understand-
The gaiety at the heart of mysteries.
What astonishes most is to look back and find
That there is really nothing to regret.
O my lost despairs! Where, where have you died?
Why did you go away and send me no report?
I see there is achievement in a leaf
Because it broke the bud, courage in a wall
Because it stands; and a beatitude in grief,
Committed as I am to the absurd.
How can I take the universe as solemn
Seeing it’s prodigal, wastes and spends,
Has no concept of thrift or responsibility
Any more than a hero with a roll of fivers
On a Saturday night taking care of his friends.
The unselective benevolence is disquieting.
What about tomorrow, and the final reckoning?
He won’t worry, he’s the final reckoning.
As one grows older one gets caught up more
In the precipitate irresponsible gaiety.
I ought to spare time to consider the bomb
And the likelihood of no future for humanity.
But the spring comes along, and trees burst into banknotes,
Or I am observing the delicate limbs of a fly
Sampling a lump of sugar on a café table.
The singing nightingales had no time for Agamemnon.
There are no consolations, none are required.
The fury and despair are the vanity.
I see the exhilaration of the numinous
Regard the tears that we shed with a dry eye.
Alas, what happened? Am I no longer sensitive?
What took my tragic gown and crown away?
What leaves me standing like a fool in the huge
Gale of the universe, naked to joy?
The godhead is in the instant of being,
The Niagara of our squandered time
Sculpting its form to the movement of its falling,
No one drop more precious than the others gone
Looking for the matches, making love or a poem,
Waiting for the bus or an old age pension.
I am not called to balance such accounts or fear
Whether the waste is worth the prospect I admire.
Still one ought to end on the serious note.
I can see a number of attitudes to strike,
The trouble is they seem fundamentally comic.
And, when one thinks, it is easier to invest
In lacrimae rerum. You get a good dividend
But how can I pull the heartstrings of a harp
I can no longer use in the ironic midday.
When he came out of hell what tune did Orpheus play,
Was it delight or frenzy that tore his bones apart?
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