Wow, Max, I loved it, especially -

With one foot in the grave,
we still give birth to appetites.

May I steal it for TRUCK? (With a short bio.)


Andrew

On 9 November 2011 09:18, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
>         After Montaigne
>
> Soon I shall have passed my fifty-sixth year
> (him, that is - myself seventy-fourth) -
> more than the traditional term of life!
> Haven't there been nations that put old folk down?
>
> Yet still I have flurries of youthfulness
> so bright they recreate for me
> the feel of younger days.
>
> I don't run any more - it's enough that I can creep.
> My life's not as sound and long as an oak-tree's,
> but at work in us both is natural decay.
>
> I'm nearing the bottom of the cask,
> tasting now of sediment and lees.
> (He had his own vineyard and cellar!
> I finish off the odd bottle of red.)
>
> 2
> Lately a tooth of mine fell out - painlessly,
> of its own accord. Well, it'd reached its use-by
> date - as have other parts of me I won't name.
>
> Thus I melt and steal away from myself
> step by step down a gentle slope.
>
> Perhaps before I note my sight is failing
> I shall have reached stone-blindness.
>
> Is my hearing growing dull?
> People nowadays refuse to speak up.
>
> 3
> To make the soul feel how it's ebbing
> you must press, press and press it.
>
> All our life has death mixed in with it.
> Even into our growth decay slips through.
>
> These old portraits (his - in my case passports) -
> here I'm twenty-five, here thirty-five.
> Compared with this recent one,
> in how many ways are they no longer myself!
>
> Before the end is reached, by how much more
> will my looks change? By how much more
> am I myself yet to change?
>
> 4
> Lingering so long, we've tired Nature out.
> Now she's forced to quit us. Teeth, eyes,
> limbs, and upkeep - all left to the mercy
> we must beg from others.
>
> Well, these are the laws of our being,
> which we must suffer patiently;
> despite all medicine - old, feeble, sick.
>
> What madness, to pray for one's lost youth!
> For long journeys expect heat, gale, and flood.
> For long years, gout, kidney-stones, sick gut.
>
> 5
> No one can restore you, at best patch and prop
> you a little, an hour or two prolonging misery.
>
> Mind - it's mind's privilege to rescue itself
> from old age. I've long urged mine to this.
>
> Any green shoots are like mistletoe on a dead tree.
> And when body calls, instantaneously
> mind deserts me. I wheedle and deal with it apart -
>
> in vain. They're in such cahoots - though I offer mind
> the classics, beautiful women - if body
> comes down with colic, down comes mind too.
>
> 6.
> With one foot in the grave,
> we still give birth to appetites.
>
> At least I've learned to look ahead
> no more than just one year.
>
> The only comfort I note in old age
> is the deadening of cares:
>
> care how the world goes,
> care for riches, knowledge,
> health, or even myself.
>
> Others are studying how to speak
> when what they should be learning
> is eternal silence.
>
> 7
> Too late to change myself, find a new course,
> though it might enhance my life.
> Too late for any new enjoyment.
> (Too late to master the new iPhone.)
>
> Fancy a person acquiring decency so late,
> fit to live when so little life is left!
>
> As I make my exit I'd gladly consign
> to any newcomer late-won wisdom only he can apply.
> Dinner's over, too late for mustard!
>
> 8.
> For a man whose head's gone soft what use
> is knowledge? Blessings even are no use now.
>
> We need no art to fall: the bottom
> is reached of itself.
>
> I'm finishing off this man I am,
> not remaking another one out of him.
>
> 9
> Too late for writing and printing.
> Whoever submits his senile mind to the presses
> is mad if he hopes to extract anything
> which does not stink of a man who is
> ugly, raving and half-asleep.
> (Present company excepted.)
>
>
>  Max de Richards
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
>



-- 
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
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