by Llywellyn Lucas
I love old flowers: the withering
Is natural and right: in mellowness to fall away;
Secession of a pear to pulp and tiny pips of seed,
The rot, the mother-date enriching wordless earth
and earth's divinity – the incessant spark.
Why should you throw away a flower that droops
its dress of insect-call?
The godling Pan has not yet come.
I love old flowers: their autumn days
To me are lovely, lovable. The mellowing, the withering,
The bronze and brown and seeding off, even in
a bowl the ghosting time,
The greying character of things inanimate or animate,
Beseeches, teaches: benison[1].
I love old horses: made, unmade by destiny of fate's decree
Sharp, sour, or humble, suns of power, as Jupiter's across our sky:
Earth takes the lightning of their eyes and man heaps up his obloquy[2].
I love old people, craggy, rocked,
with purpose of their pilgrimage.
(The young are but a bladder-pulse
of formlessness within a form).
Life is the fashioning of age.
Let others keep their new-born buds,
Their matron beauties, all the prime
Of creatures burgeoning and bold.
Within my heart the old I fold.
Llywellyn Lucas, (1965).
[1]A blessing
[2]Public criticism