Three Poems

Three poems, three takes on getting older

POSTED OCTOBER 10, 2022

I have enjoyed poetry since my high school years.  I have not been doing much reading of it recently, but this year's celebration of the centennial of T.S. Eliot's masterpiece The Waste Land re-awakened in me a desire to read some poetry.  

Unlike my love of art, kickstarted by Monet's Étretat, or my love for classical music, kickstarted by Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, I can't name a specific poem that led me to enjoy poetry so much.  Each reading or re-reading of a poem brings new insights.  This is especially true when re-reading a poem decades after you first encountered it.  Here are three such poems - two that I have always loved and one that I didn't really appreciate until recently.  Age does that to you.

The poems, which, to a greater or lesser extent, all have to do with getting older, were written by the poets while still in their twenties.*  Each poem, as we shall see, has a different take on what getting older would be like.  

T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock has a wistful, resigned flavor.  You know from the opening lines that this is not going to be a pleasant journey.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets...

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

It's an evening in autumn, a season given to thoughts of change, decay and dying.  Eliot hauntingly images the yellow fog of the night and the yellow smoke from chimneys as a cat that "rubs its back" and "rubs its muzzle" on window-panes before it 

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. 

The aging narrator, J. Alfred Prufrock, is having afternoon tea with a woman, wondering if he has "the strength to force the moment to its crisis?"  He keeps telling himself that there "indeed will be time" for a "hundred visions and revisions" and experiences still to come. But then he acknowledges that he has "measured out my life with coffee spoons" and that he has "seen the moment of my greatness flicker" and has "seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker."  

With all his past experiences and attempts to "squeeze the universe into a ball", he wonders if it was worth it all

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.”

The poem in its entirety as well as an excellent reading of it (poetry after all is meant to be heard) can be found here.

Andrei Voznesensky's Autumn in Sigulda is more a poem of leave-taking than of aging.  

Hanging out of the train, I

Bid you all good-bye.

Good-bye, Summer:

My time is up.

Sigulda is a beautiful town in Latvia known for its golden autumns, but, in Voznesensky's autumn, already "the woods have shed their leaves, empty and sad today," and "People...are also empty, as we leave behind (We have no choice) Walls, mothers, womankind: So it has always been and will be."  A particular source of Voznesensky's sadness is, of course, a woman that he met there.

In the woods the leaves were already falling

When you ran into me, asked me something.

Your dog was with you: you tugged at his leash and called him,

He tugged the other way:

Thank you for that day.

I came alive: thank you for that September,

For explaining me to myself.

They are leaving on trains going in different directions and likely never to see one another again: "Instead of us this one or that one will come."

Now for the aging part, the looking back on life part.  In what may be my favorite poetic passage, Voznesensky expresses that gratitude that is so much a part of happiness.

Thank you, Life, for having been.

In the shooting gallery,

Where the top score is ten,

I tried to reach a century:

Thank you for letting me make the mistake...

W.H. Auden's translation** of Autumn in Sigulda can be found here.  

Unlike Love Song and Autumn which I liked instantly, it took nearly six decades for me to fully appreciate Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses.***  The poem opens with the legendary Greek king - aged, idle, and sitting by his "still hearth" - remembering his younger years and not at all resigned to a slow slide towards death.  Ulysses declares:

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees...

He knows his life is far from over, with much still to see and do :

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

The poem closes with one of the most famous reflections on old age:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The poem in its entirety as well as a reading of it can be found here.

Notes:

*T.S. Eliot wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock when he was 23; Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote Ulysses when he was 24; I am not completely sure when Andrei Voznesensky wrote Autumn in Sigulda but it had already been translated into English and in a collection by the time he was 32.

**Translating poetry must be one of the most difficult tasks imaginable for a translator.  Obviously you need a poet to do the task, but how do you get the connotations and meter and rhyme to be as the original? 

***Ulysses is the Latin name for the Greek king Odysseus. The word "odyssey" has come to mean a journey of epic proportions. The word comes from Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, written in the 8th century BC. The Odyssey speaks of the legendary journey of king Odysseus to return home, to his palace and family, after the Trojan War had ended.  

Sources: Greeka, Wikipedia