BALLAD OF THE OLD LOVERS
“Your body’s slowed down, my dearest dear.
Your body’s slowed down, my dearest.”
“I’m aging, my dear—just aging, I fear.
Each day I keep growing older…
The birds in the trees may never freeze,
but the blood as you age grows colder.”
“Remember the days when we used to play
and hug on the sheets of the bed there?
You’d touch me here and touch me here,
and then we would wrestle together?
Instead we lie now like the dead there
and listen all night to the weather.”
“Remember the money we managed to save
and planned to enjoy in our sixties?
Well, sixty has come, and sixty has gone,
and what have our savings returned us
but travel in season without a good reason
and tropical sunlight that burned us?”
“Remember the friends we knew, we knew,
when we and our friends were younger?
Where have they gone, and why don’t they write,
and why have the decades divided
all those not alive from those who survive
no matter how well they’re provided?”
“But why blame our fears on the innocent years?
They’re gone and beyond re-living.
Since death’s quite efficient, and time’s insufficient,
is it asking too much to forgive us
for wanting to stay till the end of the day
and love what the years can still give us?”