Growing Old

to the tune “he xin lang: toasting the bridegroom”Now that I am old and those who crossed the mountains…

甚矣吾衰矣。
怅平⽣、交游零落，只今余⼏！
⽩发空垂三千丈，⼀笑⼈间万事。
问何物、能令公喜？
我见青⼭多妩媚，料青⼭见我应如是。
情与貌，略相似。

⼀尊搔⾸东窗⾥。
想渊明、《停云》诗就，此时风味。
江左沉酣求名者…

I’m not the first man to lose his father
slowly, not the first to wonder
when I walk in the room if the…

The doctor tells her what she can’t eat
no grains no nuts no beans no sugar a tomato is OK
but no skins…

By Brittany Perham

By Xin Qiji Tr. by Shangyang Fang 

By Xin Qiji

By Ross White 

The words of children
splash in grandmother’s mind
and ripple to now.

孩子的話兒
在祖母心中濺起
蕩漾至今。 

By John Whalen-BridgeTr. by Chun Yu

Catherine Barnett on improv, misfit details, and the humor in elegy. 

Because why not? Why not take the smashed pinecone 
of my life, render it in purple? Why not dream of…

By Martha Silano

When the big clock at the train station stopped,
the leaves kept falling,
the trains kept running,
my mother…

'Because I am mad about women
I am mad about the hills,'
Said that wild old wicked man
Who travels where God wills.
'Not to die on the straw at home,
Those hands to close the eyes,
That is all I ask, my dear,
From the old...

                                              I

What shall I do with this absurdity —
O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,
Decrepit age that...

I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last being but a broken man
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals...

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
`Those breasts are flat and fallen now
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

`Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,'...

I

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way—the children's eyes
In momentary...

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music...