Old age and the beauty of accomplishment

We are what we have become.

Obvious, of course, tautological.

Yet if we could remember this, we should perhaps become better than we are. We shall become the result of what we do and are now. Then, when old age comes, we shall have something - made of the nobility, persistence and good humour with which we have met the ordinary challenges that come our way today.

David's poem Old age is optimistic in this respect. The poem begins:

How often old age
Achieves the beauty of accomplishment

and ends:

And one may look through the eyes
Into stillness.

I would suggest that it is how a person is at the end that measures the achievement of his or her life. And to find the stillness then, we have to be capable of finding the stillness now.

That at any rate is my opinion. I shall let the poem speak for itself when I publish the whole poem on this blog later this month.

Meanwhile check back each week for new updates.

David Henschel's Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life. is available on Amazon and at the Bell Bookshop, Henley-on-Thames.