Penguin's Poems for Life

by Laura Barber

  ‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son,

  ‘I feared it might injure the brain;

  But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

  Why, I do it again and again.’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before,

  And have grown most uncommonly fat;

  Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –

  Pray, what is the reason of that?’

  ‘In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

  ‘I kept all my limbs very supple

  By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box –

  Allow me to sell you a couple?’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘and your jaws are too weak

  For anything tougher than suet;

  Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak –

  Pray, how did you manage to do it?’

  ‘In my youth,’ said his father, ‘I took to the law,

  And argued each case with my wife;

  And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw

  Has lasted the rest of my life.’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘one would hardly suppose

  That your eye was as steady as ever;

  Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –

  What made you so awfully clever?’

  ‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’

  Said his father. ‘Don’t give yourself airs!

  Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

  Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!’

  T. S. ELIOT

  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  S’io credessi che mia risposta fosse

  a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

  questa fiamma staria senza piú scosse.

  Ma per ció che giammai di questo fondo

  non tornó vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero,

  senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

  Let us go then, you and I,

  When the evening is spread out against the sky

  Like a patient etherised upon a table;

  Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

  The muttering retreats

  Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

  And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

  Streets that follow like a tedious argument

  Of insidious intent

  To lead you to an overwhelming question…

  Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’

  Let us go and make our visit.

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.

  The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

  The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

  Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

  Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

  Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

  Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

  And seeing that it was a soft October night,

  Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

  And indeed there will be time

  For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

  Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

  There will be time, there will be time

  To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

  There will be time to murder and create,

  And time for all the works and days of hands

  That lift and drop a question on your plate;

  Time for you and time for me,

  And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

  And for a hundred visions and revisions,

  Before the taking of a toast and tea.

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.

  And indeed there will be time

  To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’

  Time to turn back and descend the stair,

  With a bald spot in the middle of my hair –

  (They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)

  My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to

  the chin,

  My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a

  simple pin –

  (They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)

  Do I dare

  Disturb the universe?

  In a minute there is time

  For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

  For I have known them all already, known them all –

  Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

  I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

  I know the voices dying with a dying fall

  Beneath the music from a farther room.

  So how should I presume?

  And I have known the eyes already, known them all –

  The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

  And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

  When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

  Then how should I begin

  To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

  And how should I presume?

  And I have known the arms already, known them all –

  Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

  (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

  Is it perfume from a dress

  That makes me so digress?

  Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

  And should I then presume?

  And how should I begin?

  . . . . .

  Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

  And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

  Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

  I should have been a pair of ragged claws

  Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

  . . . . .

  And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

  Smoothed by long fingers,

  Asleep… tired… or it malingers,

  Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

  Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

  Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

  But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

  Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought

  in upon a platter,

  I am no prophet – and here’s no great matter;

  I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

  And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and

  snicker,

  And in short, I was afraid.

  And would it have been worth it, after all,

  After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

  Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

  Would it have been worth while,

  To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

  To have squeezed the universe into a ball

  To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

  To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

  Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’–

  If one, settling a pillow by her head,

  Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.

  That is not it, at all.’

  And would it have been worth it, after all,

  Would it have been worth while,

  After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled

  streets,

  After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that

  trail along the floor –

  And this, and so much more? –

  It is impossible to say just what I mean!

  But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns

  on a screen:
r />   Would it have been worth while

  If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

  And turning toward the window, should say:

  ‘That is not it at all,

  That is not what I meant, at all.’

  . . . . .

  No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

  Am an attendant lord, one that will do

  To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

  Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

  Deferential, glad to be of use,

  Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

  Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

  At times, indeed, almost ridiculous –

  Almost, at times, the Fool.

  I grow old… I grow old…

  I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

  Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

  I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

  I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

  I do not think that they will sing to me.

  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

  Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

  When the wind blows the water white and black.

  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

  By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

  Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  Terminus

  It is time to be old,

  To take in sail: –

  The god of bounds,

  Who sets to seas a shore,

  Came to me in his fatal rounds,

  And said: ‘No more!

  No farther spread

  Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

  Fancy departs: no more invent,

  Contract thy firmament

  To compass of a tent.

  There’s not enough for this and that,

  Make thy option which of two;

  Economize the failing river,

  Not the less revere the Giver,

  Leave the many and hold the few.

  Timely wise accept the terms,

  Soften the fall with wary foot;

  A little while

  Still plan and smile,

  And, fault of novel germs,

  Mature the unfallen fruit.

  Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

  Bad husbands of their fires,

  Who, when they gave thee breath,

  Failed to bequeath

  The needful sinew stark as once,

  The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

  But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

  Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, –

  Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

  Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.’

  As the bird trims her to the gale,

  I trim myself to the storm of time,

  I man the rudder, reef the sail,

  Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

  ‘Lowly faithful, banish fear,

  Right onward drive unharmed;

  The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

  And every wave is charmed.’

  W. B. YEATS

  Sailing to Byzantium

  That is no country for old men. The young

  In one another’s arms, birds in the trees

  – Those dying generations – at their song,

  The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

  Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

  Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

  Caught in that sensual music all neglect

  Monuments of unageing intellect.

  An aged man is but a paltry thing,

  A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

  Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

  For every tatter in its mortal dress,

  Nor is there singing school but studying

  Monuments of its own magnificence;

  And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

  To the holy city of Byzantium.

  O sages standing in God’s holy fire

  As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

  Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

  And be the singing-masters of my soul.

  Consume my heart away; sick with desire

  And fastened to a dying animal

  It knows not what it is; and gather me

  Into the artifice of eternity.

  Once out of nature I shall never take

  My bodily form from any natural thing,

  But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

  Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

  To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

  Or set upon a golden bough to sing

  To lords and ladies of Byzantium

  Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

  CAROLE SATYAMURTI

  Day Trip

  Two women, seventies, hold hands

  on the edge of Essex,

  hair in strong nets,

  shrieked laughter echoing gulls

  as shingle sucks from under feet

  easing in brine.

  There must be an unspoken point

  when the sea feels like

  their future. No longer paddling,

  ankles submerge in lace,

  in satin ripple.

  Dress hems darken.

  They do not risk their balance

  for the shimmering of ships

  at the horizon’s sweep

  as, thigh deep, they inch on

  fingers splayed, wrists bent,

  learning to walk again.

  JENNY JOSEPH

  Warning

  When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

  With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

  And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer

  gloves

  And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

  I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

  And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

  And run my stick along the public railings

  And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

  I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

  And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

  And learn to spit.

  You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

  And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

  Or only bread and pickle for a week

  And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in

  boxes.

  But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

  And pay our rent and not swear in the street

  And set a good example for the children.

  We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

  But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

  So people who know me are not too shocked and

  surprised

  When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

  WOLE SOYINKA

  To My First White Hairs

  Hirsute hell chimney-spouts, black thunderthroes

  confluence of coarse cloudfleeces – my head sir! –

  scourbrush

  in bitumen, past fossil beyond fingers of light – until…!

  Sudden sprung as corn stalk after rain, watered milk weak;

  as lightning shrunk to ant’s antenna, shrivelled

  off the febrile sight of crickets in the sun –

  THREE WHITE HAIRS! frail invaders of the

  undergrowth

  interpret time. I view them, wired wisps, vibrant coiled

  beneath a magnifying glass, milk-thread presages

  Of the hoary phase. Weave then, weave o quickly weave

  your sham veneration. Knit me webs of winter sagehood,

  nightcap, and the fungoid sequins of a crown.<
br />
  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  Ulysses

  It little profits that an idle king,

  By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

  Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole

  Unequal laws unto a savage race,

  That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

  I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

  Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed

  Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

  That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

  Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

  Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

  For always roaming with a hungry heart

  Much have I seen and known; cities of men

  And manners, climates, councils, governments,

  Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

  And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

  Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

  I am a part of all that I have met;

  Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

  Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

  For ever and for ever when I move.

  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

  To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

  As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life

  Were all too little, and of one to me

  Little remains: but every hour is saved

  From that eternal silence, something more,

  A bringer of new things; and vile it were

  For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

  And this gray spirit yearning in desire

  To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

  Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

  This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

  To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle –

  Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

  This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

  A rugged people, and through soft degrees

  Subdue them to the useful and the good.