At Sixty Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

At Sixty



At sixty
Then
I will not have
A beard hanging from
My chin.

I will be a buffoon.
I will rise higher
And higher in this new profession
I will set target:
Buffoon of the Earth.

And
Below the smiling
And the dark joking
There will be
An ever darker heart
Sad and pining.

Thursday, July 21, 2016
Topic(s) of this poem: aging,beauty,cloud,death,dogs,smile,tree,verse
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Daniel Brick 23 July 2016

I just turned 69, so if I wrote such a poem it would be titled AT SEVENTY. I'm not ready to do so, but I admire your confrontation with age. You don't express negative feelings, you don't whine. There is a trenchant resolution to deal with aging creatively when the poet sets his goal on being as prize-winning buffoon. He turns a potential insult into a gesture of victory. But it's the last stanza that I find so special. You express that sense of wistfulness which is behind my inability to write such a poem. But you have written the poem with dignity, awareness and poise.

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