|
The patrician head
Once so regal and proud
Now limp, leaning to one side;
The hair dishevelled,
Greying at the temples
Looping around the wrinkled forehead.
The face is heavily lined
Around the cheeks and under the eyes
Jutting at angles or straight
Frequently criss-crossing
To delineate a chiselled
Rigorous, weather-beaten life
That has been lived
To the full, with the final denouement
Of an exit left.
He was once sprightly
Smiling at passers-by
Inviting them inside
To a cornucopian cave
Of books and artifacts.
Now he is hearing voices
The music of his youth
Girls in summer dresses
Waltzing before his eyes.
Men in white coats
Waiting for the cue
From the man
With the lines on his face.
The world he believed in
Is now gone for good.
He didn’t subscribe
To trivia or ephemera
Nor the way the old values
Are eroded by the march of time.
He remembered, in childhood
Seeing colours, white so pure
No grey or shades of dark blue;
There would be rainbows
Every summer without fail
The sun in burnished orange
Would occupy the same spot
No matter where you stood
Or looked at.
The natural spring in which he bathed
Has dried up and been reclaimed.
There now stands a row of shops
Selling every cream and medicine
Except the antidote to ageing
And a cure for recalling old times.
|
