On seeing an old photo
Was I ever so young?
I don't recall being so fresh and new
I feel so old these days
like I've lived a thousand lives.
I have an older partner
live in an ancient country
all of those decades, centuries and epochs
of delusion have become a part of me.
I've always been shy
but my eyes were once filled with possibilities
now there are no new tastes
and I've heard it all before.
I'm feeling so very weary of this world
even if I've still got time to live.
I wonder what Twain, Lawrence and Woolf
would make of these days?
Would the modernist wit, energy and wisdom
Give us any solutions?
Would they hold the paranoia in check?
Or would Virginia drown herself again
After witnessing the first beheading?
Are we reliving the Crusades
or is it the madness of history's
fanaticism spiralling out of control?
Will the Jehovah's witnesses rule over the world
after we all die from a new pestilence,
or finish killing one another.
Promise me you will remember me
when I disappear into the heavens
without ever coming down to earth
blown to smithereens …
at least I died going somewhere or
coming home, rather than lying in a coffin,
an octogenarian with a tube down my throat.