That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
When I was a young man, the Shakespeare poem I memorized as I lay awake at night was “Sonnet 18,” which begins, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” You never could tell when that might come in handy. But now in my dozing dotage I find myself murmuring “Sonnet 73” (above and below), a dark meditation on the sunset years. Amazingly (everything about Shakespeare’s amazing), he probably wrote “#73” in his early 30s (he was only 52 when he died). How did he know so much about old age when he was basically just a kid? It’s the same sort of genius-dust that Stephen Crane sniffed while writing The Red Badge of Courage without ever having fought in a war.
Human beings, blessed and cursed with imagination, will do almost anything to live a little longer. The most honest among us are those like Woody Allen, who observed that “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works — I want to achieve it by not dying.” A few thousand rich Americans are betting on cryopreservation (freezing after death), with the hope that medical science will figure out how to revive them in the future. This is as unlikely as America voting for Trump to be president, and almost as scary.
We often hear that “60 is the new 40” and, recently, “70 is the new 50.” We don’t hear much about the 80s, the group I travel with, twirling canes and adjusting hearing aids (a not infrequent squeal at poetry readings). My own experience tells me that 80 is the new 79. In any case, when we look at the ads on TV or in magazines, the models all seem to be 19 or younger, ignoring the 40s and 50s, especially the new ones. So America’s offering us a paradoxical deal: As we age we’re looking younger than we used to, but not young enough to be appealing to customers. Looks aren’t everything: I said to our doctor, who complimented us when we entered his office, “We look better than we feel.”
Lately, I’ve had to go to a chiropractor who works in a large rectangular brick building with narrow hallways and many doors; in short, for the elderly, a maze. Even after several visits, I still go the wrong way to get to the exit, like a retarded mouse in a scientific study. Nurses emerge and gently prod me. Since I hadn’t fallen or bumped anything hard, I asked my doctor how I had injured my hip; he looked at me kindly and said, “Bad luck.”
The undeniable difficulties of old age are speedily becoming much more common: life expectancy when we were born was less than 60; today it’s over 80. But nowadays it seems even worse, the physical and mental deterioration doubled like compound interest by what’s happening to America. Our political system’s suffering from arteriosclerosis and osteoporosis at once. All of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, loved, worked for, marched for, and believed in our country. These days, large numbers of both sides look around with apprehension, while loneliness is spreading like the measles.
And yet, I think poetry (or whichever art works for you) can help. Its thrust is acceptance, connection, vulnerability. Whose woods these are I think I know. I don’t know I know; I just think so. Dictators and demagogues, who always know everything, are always against poetry.
Poets, especially old poets, are against the death penalty.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by...
—Both quotes from “Sonnet 73” by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
Peter Meinke will be signing his new book of stories, "The Expert Witness," on Sun., Nov. 6 at 3 p.m. at Haslam's Book Store.
