Age Before Beauty

Age is a gossip
who casts bad light
on mere distance.

Age is the Village Idiot,
menacing you
with his memory stick.

Age is the vampire of energy,
and he leaves you two goggles
into your hollowed husk.

Today, it suits me to spare
my bored and hostile charges
the plan I have pressed in this book.

Today, it suits me to make
what I may of what I was and
take it wherever it leads.

I demand silence,
and I pretend that
I have been obeyed.

I clear my throat, and
I say, "Once, when I was
even younger than I am now..."