The Years Decay

The first line is obviously borrowed and adapted from Tennyson's marvellous poem, "Tithonus." The metre and rhyme are obvious, except that lines 4 and 5 in each stanza are trochaic with feminine endings.

   Another poem which sounds similar in tone to me, despite being written 43 years earlier, is "Winter's Ape," written in January 1980 and posted here on 11 December 2011.

--------------

The years decay, the years decay and fall
And in an eyelid’s blink you find you’ve aged:
      The sea mist like a shawl,
   Clammy on your shoulders creeping,
   Stifles health to old man’s weeping,
      And rain that’s unassuaged
         Drops tears for all.

Sing songs of rue, sing songs of rue and cry:
The years were good, life’s pluses richly stored,
      And none might say that I,
   Love’s rewards betraying rashly,
   Peacock-strutting, glaired and brashly,
      Strange gods embraced, or whored
         From truth to lie.

But still this pain, but still this pain unstopped
Insists that love and mind’s appel have failed,
      And age, for which none opt –
   Epidermis dryly shrinking,
   Bowels aching as if kinking –
      Drains off like slops unpailed
         Which can’t be mopped.

Why cling to life, why cling to life and mourn?
Oh sun that’s warm upon the dew-dropped stone
      What agonies forlorn
   Scarify dark death’s wide marches,
   Skulled and boned in soil which parches?
      Unhoped, we sink alone,
      Mocked by death’s rictus-yawn.

====================
© May 2023