Thirty-eight winters, as many summers too,
I've seen the world turn around its stable ways
And bring the dawns, the evenings, and the dusk.
I have watched it so benignly flow in time,
A season for all wants and pleasures passing.
And time to time I wondered who we were,
Prometheus unbound or Samson shackled.
Teach us to number our days, to gain that wisdom,
Forsake us not in old age as in youth.
And most I saw the ancient virtues fall.
The old hypocrisies were torn away,
And underneath it all a creature breathed,
Biological in life, abstract in death,
Torn passionately between present and past,
And somehow uncomfortable with either.
We saw them schism, demigod and beast,
And watched them struggle vehemently together.
Nor could we free the soul with body bound,
For we had found them intimately joined
With Siamese destinies of life and death.
The humanistic dream unleashed a beast;
The sacramental prayer prisoned a soul.
And what might free a whole man stayed submerged
For want of air or food or lasting light
And plagues our destinies with endless questions.
Jay Cohen