A Country For Old Men

Autumn is certainly a country for old men. The fallen leaves, the chilling wind, and the dark foreboding clouds point us to every tatter in our mortal dress. No more “salmon-falls, or mackerel-crowded seas: Fish, flesh, or fowl, which commend all summer long; nor whatever is begotten, born, and dies, caught in that sensual music,” except the sight of winding stairs towards decay. Unlike Yeats, I don’t long for Byzantium to sing to the lord and ladies of what is passing, or pressing or to come. These days, I feel the gnawing grip of arthritis, and the slow pain in my tattered bones which heralds one ringing truth: an aged man is but a paltry thing. But in my dream, I see the familiar shore of my home country and the hospitable crowd in their chorus of smile and love.

As for me, it took a decade or two to adjust to the Canadian climate, and it might take longer now to revert back to the culture of my youth. Then there is the medical requirement: having been sustained on a regiment of pills for my diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, and other inconveniences, I would think my habitual pilgrimage to a physician would bankrupt me if I were living back in Asia.

After all that is said and done, perhaps I am in the right country – for old men. What remains is still to make new songs. “My songs of old earth's dreamy youth: But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou! For fair are poppies on the brow: Dream, dream, for this is also sooth…” (from The Song of the Happy Shepherd).