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I have written a number of poems, over the years, on the subject of old age,
more and more of them lately. And I notice that they haven't changed much in
content or metaphor or even in attitude about what it is like to be old. What
is different, however, is the specific distance between the speaker of the
poem and the fact of old age: I started writing poems about the old age of
other people and now I write as if the subject belonged to me. And perhaps
the strongest emotion I feel about this is astonishment. As W. S. Merwin
writes in his poem "The Child": "Somehow it is inconceivable that I should
be the age I am."
Grandparents were the subject of many of my early poems as well as other old
people I knew. In a later poem called "Ethics" the barrier between us was
lowered slightly as I wrote "This fall in a real museum I stand / before a
real Rembrandt, old woman / or nearly so myself."
When I first read that poem aloud a poetry readings, an involuntary smile
would come to my mouth when I read those lines, as if to imply to the
audience as well as to myself that we all knew I was not either old or nearly
old. Over the years, in the muscles of my face, I could feel that smile
contract and contract until it finally disappeared. "Or nearly so myself."
That "nearly" feels these days more like a gift that has been withdrawn.
Now, in my new book, The Last Uncle, I confront old age, my own old
age, head on in poems such as "The Lost Kingdom," "Penultimate Things," and
"Memory's Guest." And I think about what a ninety-three-year old friend
told me once. "Old age is not for cowards," she said, something I have
started to learn, poem by poem, myself.
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