Late Ripeness by Czeslaw Milosz
"Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, / I felt a door opening in me and I entered / the clarity of early morning." — Czesław Miłosz
I left this morning by Peter Bland
"I left this morning saying 'I love you' / as if setting out for some unknown country" — Peter Bland
A Happy Birthday by Ted Kooser
"I wanted to ride this day down into night, / to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page" — Ted Kooser
Affirmation by Donald Hall
"Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge / and affirm that it is fitting / and delicious to lose everything." — Donald Hall
Since Nine— by C. P. Cavafy
"Half past twelve. How the time has passed. / Half past twelve. How the years have passed." — C. P. Cavafy
The Old Fools by Philip Larkin
"Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms / Inside your head, and people in them, acting" — Philip Larkin
In View of the Fact by A. R. Ammons
"at the same time we are getting used to so / many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip // to the ones left:" — A. R. Ammons
Sixty by Stephen Dunn
"A heart is to be spent. As for me, I'll share / my mulcher with anyone who needs to mulch." — Stephen Dunn
To My Last Period by Lucille Clifton
"well, girl, goodbye, / after thirty-eight years." — Lucille Clifton
When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
“But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, / And loved the sorrows of your changing face;” —