86'd

Considerations on his 86^th birthday, respectfully plagiarizing Thomas Hardy's lines on a similar occasion a century ago . . .

Well, World, I have kept faith with you,

Kept faith with you;

Upon the whole you've proved to be

Much as I thought it seemed

When as a child I used to lie

Upon that sinkplaat dak and scan the sky,

Never, I own, expecting, no, not I,

That life would so quickly fly by.

Then you said, and since have said,

Many times have since said,

In the overweening voice that you affect

With clouds and hills around:

“Many have loved me foolishly,

Many with smooth obliquity,

While some have shown contempt for me

Till slid into the cremating fire."

“You did not promise overmuch, Parent; overmuch—

Merely a Nobel Prize and such!"

I would remind the world of you,

Wise warning for your debtors’ sake,

Who also should not fail to take

A poem for the strain and ache

That ages hence assign.

Notes: Sinkplaat dak: a roof of corrugated or galvanized metal, typical of the old-fashioned domestic architecture of the Great Karoo.

Thomas Hardy's original poem ,"He Never Expected Much," can be found here, and at multiple other online sites: https://www.poetry.com/poem/36379/he-never-expected-much (1926).

Saturday, November 15, 2025