The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Fri 8/4/06)

[RetroLounge]

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Donald Hall


********************

RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[malta blue]

1. Beautiful.

Thanks RL :hi:

[RetroLounge]

5. You are welcome

:hi:

RL

[miss_american_pie]

2. ...

Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary.

RL

[idgiehkt]

3. I love it but I don't agree with it.

I don't think it's 'fitting and delicious'. I don't know that I will ever be able to feel this way. I have a feeling it's going to get less 'delicious' as time goes on, but I appreciate the poet's honesty. I think he did a great job of communicating throughout the whole poem, but those last two lines, I just don't know...

Now I've got the last two lines of another poem in my head that talks about this, but I can't remember the name or the author; it ends, "If a flow in age appear, 'tis but rain, and runs not clear."

edit: I found the poem, it's Dryden, "Oh How Sweet It Is To Love"
http://livingindryden.org/2005/03/how_sweet_it_is_to_love.html

last two stanzas:
Love and Time with reverence use,
Treat them like a parting friend;
Nor the golden gifts refuse
Which in youth sincere they send:
For each year their price is more,
And they less simple than before.

Love, like spring-tides full and high,
Swells in every youthful vein;
But each tide does less supply,
Till they quite shrink in again:
If a flow in age appear,
'Tis but rain, and runs not clear.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. My dear RetroLounge!

How melancholy this one is.....

It does describe its feelings very well...........

But I cannot agree........

It is NOT fitting and delicious to lose everything.....it's sad ......:hug:

[RetroLounge]

7. Sad, yes...

:hug:

RL