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Slanting Lines
Thesis:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
—Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra
Antithesis:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
—Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night
Synthesis:
While the Rose blows along the River Brink,
With old Khayyam the Ruby Vintage drink:
And when the Angel with his darker Draught
Draws up to thee—take that, and do not shrink.
—The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, tr. Edward Fitzgerald
Maybe, for some, the resolution lies
in their cups. Thomas certainly did his level best
to drink himself to death. But for these falls,
no drink involved.
P
The fall is denied.
Anyway, the cancer can be blamed
for many things. Hard to tell, now,
which failing faculties to place
at its door. Rage too against
the cessation of treatment—
but that is a symptom, not a cause.
A
The fall drew blood.
No such obvious culprit here,
except for age, pure and simple. No rage—
just a sort of passive acceptance.
Set against this, a certain toughness,
hidden, but evident in the number,
best expressed Roman fashion:
CII.
We
As for us, the bits begin to fall off.
We are not so far behind.
__________________
Old age ain’t no place for sissies.
—Bette Davis