Reading:
Growing old - a reply In memory Elaine Feinstein d. 2019 The first thing to say Is that I do not like it. I agree with you That many of the things I’d feared Have not, as it happened, happened. Like yours, my children have not Had to run away from anyone, Nor to my surprise, has anyone Run away from me. And that is a marvel! Most of the other ghosts that once tormented Have not shown up either, so I concede I have much to be grateful for. My health is not too bad considering. There are minor ills naturally, Balance is wobbly and knees Can buckle going up the stairs. And I’ve been deaf for years. Though prostate remnants Fester in the dark I feel no pain. On fine days I can reckon I’m due For another summer or two. I hope for more for of course But all in all I can’t complain. And yet, and yet, I’m still suffused With feelings of regret. One afternoon we sat and talked about the past, You too survivor of a cursed cancer, Neither of us in the flush of youth, to put it mildly! We looked through French windows to your lemon tree, And I admired your steadfastness and lifelong fealty To your talent as a writer. In contrast I felt that I’d meandered All my life this way and that, too readily And so I’d ended empty-handed. It was not so much the roads not taken As those that were and then forsaken. You said, in what I took to be The gentlest of reproofs And not quite quoting the Bible, ‘We each toil in our own vineyard And we reap the fruits thereof.’ It’s sad but I must go along with you: The generality is largely true. But how can I make a thing both good and new That might outlast the ravages of time? Not just those hours, days and months That are rags indeed, but the longue durée Which, unlike love is not indifferent to clime. The academic vineyard where I toiled each day Was not my own. Others reap my bounty. Last week I went to see a garden formed On land that once belonged to monks Who built Saint Michael’s Mount. For centuries this was their vineyard. But when at length the holy men departed from Their island home, fields supplanted vine. Later still, tillage turned to tares As a lineage of six hundred years Came to an end. The final heir laid down A carriage drive and planted out the valley With beech, oak, sweet chestnut and holly. A recent owner has transformed it wholly. It’s now a landscaped pleasure park, A riot of exotic planting to delight His many thousand visitors. I wonder what he feels when he looks back? When visitors have gone, does he survey What he has done and say, ‘I have made A living work of art, one that will speak To those who come to see, long after me, That making beauty that endures was possible?’ Or will he take a sober, sadder view and think, ‘As planet burns all this will perish. Deciduous Will shrivel first. My palms and cactuses May last a little longer. But all too soon both Pleasure parks and vineyards will revert to dust. What then was the point of all that effort spent?’ ‘We each toil in our own vineyard…’ Even as an arid earth rolls on indifferent.
Peter Lloyd Jones 