#263

[The poem is misidentified here as #261. The text is of #263.]

http://www.lorenwebster.net/In_a_Dark_Time/2007/01/17/berrymans-dream-song-261/

Here is one answer to this poem: “When I am Old”

Here’s another:

To the Aged

You found out in your last, finest, freest

Years that they never really wanted

Your money. This may have been surprising.

They collected from you more than they could ever spend.

As an ancillary project they tried to exhaust

Our deep planet in spending, the eager

Young hollow Fascists, the cool corporate

Aristocrats. Still, Earth’s richness persists

Beyond their ken. That is one satisfaction

Because you are rich too beyond their ken.

But as a local tactic debt was effective.

There was a resultant pain, yes,

But you learned that life hurts

And you learned that pain can be borne

More often than not. For those destroyed

By the pain they bore, you wept.

Those others whom we accuse do not know

Weeping, the tears of which connected

You to the fulfillment and ebb

Of water, and this comforted you.

They will not experience this comfort.

When you were young, you wept often, saying

“yes” to them, and when you rebelled later,

It was because you were expected to say “yes,”

And when you finally established your self—

And traded for their comforts—

And raised your secure family as they needed—

And grew a chitinous respectability—

And visited a park and a site and a landmark—

You lived in yes and clenched your teeth.

This was not wise, but it was also tactical,

And you may now forgive yourself

The contingencies of yes for they

Have seen you through to an aged

Fulfillment where you may now forsake

Respectability, and while you need not

Articulate this sentiment

You may now certainly think it: Fuck off.

For aging means that your death approaches

Like a sunrise. A glimmer of gray

Paints the horizon, the rising

Of a new, certain knowledge that you

Were always free after all, and were never

In debt, and that moment when the bright

Sun sheds the horizon

Your freedom shines at its most full

And lets you know something perfectly:

They was us. All together now.

Resting. In peace.

KZ