A Poem For My Sixty-Eighth Birthday

   He called it many things, the hand of time;
A "bloody tyrant" reaping with its scythe;
And like the hawks that circled overhead
Laid claim to life even if he were dead.                   (1)
   And I have measured it that self same hand:
In life, in epitaph and infant death;
And thinking on what was and might have been,
Have marvelled that I should be here at all.
   And now my body, slavish, lags behind;
The tigerish sinews they are wearing thin.
And still I boast that I am well preserved;
And overlook the medical hors-d'oeuvre.
   For like the pendulum moving to and fro,
The paths are many I have still to go,
Knowing it was not me who set the springs,
That time and motion - they are celestial things.

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© Cormac McCloskey
(1) Shakespeare

Note: This blog, "A Poem For My Sixty-Eighth Birthday", was first published on Windows Live Spaces, by me, on 14th February 2010