AS I GET OLDER I DON’T UNDERSTAND

As I get older I don’t understand
Children spending summer indoors
Texting and playing video games
And downloading iTunes

As I get older I don’t understand
The rising cost of the essentials
Food, shelter and clothing
And lack of health care provided for everyone

As I get older I don’t understand
The lack of manners and courtesy
Loyalty, camaraderie, chivalry
And the lack of respect for human dignity

As I get older I don’t understand
The violence in movies and video games
In music and books and magazines
And the bloody carnage in our city streets

As I get older I don’t understand
The lack of trust and faith
And love and peace and freedom
Of speech becoming a licence to be hateful

As I get older I don’t understand
How fast life slips by
How little we have loved
How little we have made a difference

September 19, 2010
Nick van Heeren

THE TEA SHOP

The girl in the tea shop
Is not so beautiful as she was,
The August has worn against her.
She does not get up the stairs so eagerly;
Yes, she also will turn middle-aged,
And the glow of youth that she spread about us
As she brought us our muffins
Will be spread about us no longer.
She also will turn middle-aged.

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

by W. H. Auden


(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

I'M GETTING OLD

    I'm getting old. I feel it coming on. Not just in my body which is slowly breaking down and deteriorating. But I also feel it inside. I'm getting old. I feel it coming on.

    I'm getting old. I feel it coming on. Not just in my mind with loss of memory and forgetting of names. But I also feel it in my spirit. I'm getting old. I feel it coming on.

    I'm getting old. I feel it coming on. Not just in my reminiscing or longing for the good old days. But I feel it in my loss of hope. I'm getting old. I feel it coming on.

    I'm getting old. I feel it coming on. Not just in my lack of patience or love or desire for goodness. But I feel it in my heart. I'm getting old. I feel it coming on.

    I'm getting old. I feel it coming on. Not just in the graying of hair and obesity of weight. But I feel it in my being. I'm getting old. I feel it coming on.

    At what point in time do hope and despair and energy and fatigue blend and become one? At what point in time does compromising and being stagnant and cold become the standard of normalcy? At what point in time does promise become loss of opportunity? Faith becomes disillusionment. Trust becomes wariness.

I'm getting old. I feel it coming on.

FIRING RANGE

My experience with firearms is really limited. When I was a kid my neighbours had BB guns and let me shoot them off from time to time. Our targets were mainly street lights, snakes and a new house that was built in the middle of our sandlot baseball field.

I remember my friend Carl aiming at a bird flying by and pulling the trigger and actually hitting the poor thing in mid-air. It fell like a stone to the ground dead. We looked at each other so surprised that the robin was dead. Then his old aunt, Edna, from across the street started yelling and screaming that we were murderers and should be ashamed of ourselves. We responded by running away as fast as we could!

A couple of years ago I had a problem with my computer's motherboard. I phoned up a friend of mine, Richard, who was a programmer and knew how to work on computers as well to make an appointment for him to look at it.

He took my computer apart, showed me how it had been poorly designed and why my motherboard had fried. He then said for me to come along with him for a car ride.

We went downtown and parked in a seedy little alley that runs adjacent to our main street. We got out of his vehicle and walked through a door and then went down a flight or two of stairs. It was dark and damp. I had never been told of this subterranean area that was right below our downtown district.

We then entered through a set of heavy doors, possibly of steel, and walked into a firing range. Richard opened up the case he was carrying and pulled out a gun. He explained that it was a German luger from World War Two. He loaded it, described how it worked, and let me take aim at some targets at the far end of the gallery.

I was not a very good shot. But I also felt sick inside. If this was a real German Luger I wondered if it had seen any action. How many Nazis or German people had used this gun to blow out the brains of precious Jewish citizens?

I knew that Richard could sense how uncomfortable I was shooting a gun. He didn't press me to take another round when the gun was emptied. We left shortly after and he never asked me back there again. I am not disappointed.