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.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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.