Where I Live (Part II)
I live in that awkward zone for men, the time of life during which you feel young enough for the sports of your youth, while knowing that this is quite likely untrue. I console myself with thoughts of Ryan Giggs and David Beckham, only to realise that I am older than either, and earn a minuscule fraction of their wages (and that's my annual wage against their monthly, it seems).
I live in the region just after spring, somewhere into summer, with a view of autumn and a dread of winter. Winter's faintest whispers are in my hair, my eyes, my sinews. I still feel young, but that is more a sign of how resilient my mental landscaping is, than a sign of how physically fit I am.
I live in that odd time when the old have passed away, but so have some of the young. Some of those I grew up with are dead, from heart failure, from misadventure, from a malaise of the soul. Just yesterday I received the news that a young man two-thirds of my age had died after a wasting disease. I knew him; he was a good man, a man of integrity — and he has gone away.
I have returned to the poetry of my youth. My mother, always one for the metaphysical poets, brought me up on John Donne. I found myself at Meditation XVII. And there, these words leapt out at me in violent ambush:
When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.
And those great words are not even the most well-remembered of that meditation. Sometimes it seems that the talent of the world has died as well, that the world is like me; that old Dylan's 'green fuse' that drives my green age also drives the world, and both are less and less green by the day.
I live in the region just after spring, somewhere into summer, with a view of autumn and a dread of winter. Winter's faintest whispers are in my hair, my eyes, my sinews. I still feel young, but that is more a sign of how resilient my mental landscaping is, than a sign of how physically fit I am.
I live in that odd time when the old have passed away, but so have some of the young. Some of those I grew up with are dead, from heart failure, from misadventure, from a malaise of the soul. Just yesterday I received the news that a young man two-thirds of my age had died after a wasting disease. I knew him; he was a good man, a man of integrity — and he has gone away.
I have returned to the poetry of my youth. My mother, always one for the metaphysical poets, brought me up on John Donne. I found myself at Meditation XVII. And there, these words leapt out at me in violent ambush:
When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.
And those great words are not even the most well-remembered of that meditation. Sometimes it seems that the talent of the world has died as well, that the world is like me; that old Dylan's 'green fuse' that drives my green age also drives the world, and both are less and less green by the day.
Labels: Age, Life, Meditation, Poetry, Reflections
etched with acid at 12:59:00 am
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