Ageing

However hard you try

You just can’t catch yourself ageing.

It’s this that leads many (and I am one)

To pity the sad degeneration of people

Like film actors, whose lives have been locked

At some point on frames of celluloid,

While genuinely believing

(Except in palpitating moments alone

Without the comfort of noise)

That they themselves will not age, decay,

Die, rot and disappear.

But I don’t think even these big people

With their big homes brim-full of reminders

Of their silver screen heyday – bright teeth, perfect hair –

Have any better grasp of their own mortality,

Are any closer to the fulfilment of facing Truth,

Because they themselves were never frozen,

Fixed twenty-four times a second;

Their lives – like ours – have trickled,

Swept, occasionally jolted,

But imperceptibly as the minute hand.

Their lives, like ours, have moved in daily fact,

Waking with the same face,

The same eyes that mocked reason in youth,

And try as they have

They just haven’t caught themselves ageing.