The harbingers are come. See, see their mark; <br />White is their colour; and behold my head. <br /> -- George Herbert <br /> <br />Long gone the smoke-and-pepper childhood smell <br />Of the smoldering immolation of the year, <br />Leaf-strewn in scattered grandeur where it fell, <br />Golden and poxed with frost, tarnished and sere. <br /> <br />And I myself have whitened in the weathers <br />Of heaped-up Januaries as they bequeath <br />The annual rings and wrongs that wring my withers, <br />Sober my thoughts, and undermine my teeth. <br /> <br />The dramatis personae of our lives <br />Dwindle and wizen; familiar boyhood shames, <br />The tribulations one somehow survives, <br />Rise smokily from propitiatory flames <br /> <br />Of our forgetfulness until we find <br />It becomes strangely easy to forgive <br />Even ourselves with this clouding of the mind, <br />This cinerous blur and smudge in which we live. <br /> <br />A turn, a glide, a quarter turn and bow, <br />The stately dance advances; these are airs <br />Bone-deep and numbing as I should know by now, <br />Diminishing the cast, like musical chairs.<br /><br />Anthony Evan Hecht<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sarabande-on-attaining-the-age-of-seventy-seven/
