Growing old is this: things you enjoyed
Are tiresome, muddy waters cloud the spring,
Of sharpness even pain is now devoid
For soon there’ll be an end to everything.
And what we once regarded with resentment—
Commitment, duty, binding obligation—
Is now a source of refuge and contentment:
One more day’s work would bring us consolation.
This bourgeois comfort too, though, cannot last—
The soul now longs to fly without a care.
It senses death, when time and self have passed
And deeply breathes it in like sweetest air.