Light and Dark
Lady, take care; for in the diamond eyes
Of old old men is figured your undoing;
Love is turned in behind the wrinkled lids
To nurse their fear and scorn at their near going.
Flesh hangs like the curtains in a house
Long unused, damp as cellars without wine;
They are the future of us all, when we
Will be dried-leaf-thin, the sour whine
Of a siren’s diminuendo. They have no past
But egg husks shattered to a rubbish heap
By memory’s looting. Do not follow them
To their camp pitched in a cranny, do not keep
To the road for them, a weary weary yard
Will bring you in; that beckoning host ahead,
Inn-keeper Death, has but to lift his hat
To topple the oldster in the dust. Read,
Poor old man, the sensual moral; sleep
Narrow in your bed, wear no
More so bright a rose in your lapel;
The spell of the world is loosed, it is time to go.
Copyright Credit: Barbara Howes, “Light and Dark” from Light and Dark. Copyright © 1959 by Barbara Howes. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Source: Collected Poems 1945-1990 (1995)