A favourite poem.......in memory of my mother who died of LBD

[Guest guest]

A poem by one of my favourite poets.......

Kavanaugh

OLD MAN

Old man-what has life done to you?

God! For you, old man, I would create a heaven,

So merciless has life been on the earth.

Your eyes so pure and blue,

Childlike now and hollow in their sockets,

Your body feeble and almost spent,

Only the spirit that still beats in it,

Reminds me that it is yours.

Antiseptic hands care for you and prod you when

you quarrel like the child you could never be.

Damn the life that took me from you!

Damn the world that keeps you alive

And shoves you aside.

Damn me for forgetting you in the agony of present

pain

I love you old man, feeble old man

With rumpled hat.

Fighting old man who will struggle

firecely till the day he dies.

Not paranoia this, as learned doctors diagnose -

Only a tired old man who has lost the sophisticated

pretense that obscured

your lonely struggle and locked it wordlessly

in your heart!

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