Have you sent it to her, Max?
On 17 August 2011 01:51, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Decrepitude
> [for Suzi Hall]
>
> Nothing's worse, I'd say to my students,
> than an abstract noun as poem title.
>
> Who remembers Wordsworth's Leech-Gatherer
> by the name he gave it, Resolution
>
> and Independence?! Reso what? they'd say.
> I rested my case. But then they were also
>
> not aware of the leech-gatherer himself.
> We teachers in our youth begin in gladness,
>
> but thereof soon come to grief at blankness
> in our students, lovely folk though they are
>
> in other ways, specially nubility.
> Ah the leech-gatherer, wandering the moor
>
> collecting leeches in a pouch or jar
> to the best of his weak ability
>
> to sell to the nearest pharmacy
> where leeches were vital in that era
>
> of bloodletting! His firmness of mind
> reproached young Wordsworth for his own
>
> mood-swings, joyfully up, dejectedly down.
> Myself, I've reached the leech-gatherer's age
>
> but with back still straight and a comfy home,
> and smart car to drive to the pharmacy,
>
> where five costly prescriptions await me -
> what can I say about decrepitude?
>
> Mainly, how I'm trying to conceal it.
> Such vanity, and in vain my vanity.
>
> Getting up from table when after repartee
> with nimble-witted youthful company,
>
> I flinch, shrink, compose a mask to hide
> the twinges of decrepitude;
>
> discompose my still-young inner self
> as fingers, limbs and all their joints,
>
> neck, backbone, the lot, shriek silent pain;
> postpone the movements needed to escape
>
> from table, happy company and room.
> Better to linger until they've gone,
>
> but they're tireless, partying on
> till tomorrow, while I know that soon
>
> if I don't escape I'll swoon
> with exhaustion and the wine.
>
> Hereof comes in the end - if not
> Alzheimer's, and how would I know? -
>
> then Wordsworthian despondency full-on.
>
>
> Max Richards
>
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--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
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The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
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