Because I could not run from Age
He crept up unawares,
I met him—unexpectedly—
One morning on the stairs.
And not much later, while I combed
The hair upon my head,
I found his twisted—silver—silk
Had taken root instead.
A cuckoo nests within my bowels—
It wakes me in the night—
And I surmise who laid the egg
To raise it there—in spite.
No gentleman—at all—is Age,
He lurks in clefts and nooks,
His gifts—are those—white elephants—
We read about in books.
A ruffian—and a rogue—he steals
A tooth and clouds an eye—
What use are such—at second-hand?
His mischiefs multiply.
The skein of life loops round to braid
A melancholy truth—
This—terrorist—destroyer—is
The bastard twin of youth.
You don’t exactly have to be a poetry professor to guess where the form of this poem came from. That’s right, it’s Emily Dickinson masterpiece, ‘Because I Could Not Stop For Death’. Her poem was composed about 1890. It’s trick lies not only in the subtle characterisation of Death as a courteous gentleman, but in the eventual discovery by the reader that its utterance is by someone already dead. I have used her long hyphens—too!
‘White elephants’ were gifts from an apocryphal king of Siam intended to beggar the recipient: they could neither be worked, nor sold, nor slain and cost a fortune to feed. Bend Sinister is a term from heraldry that I felt appropriate for this melancholy subject.