Forever Young, Forever Old Poem by gershon hepner

Forever young, invincible and pure,
the poet tries to seek eternally for truth,
till overwhelmed by age when he, mature,
abandons it with other burdens of his youth.

Forever old and vulnerable, unsure,
the poet neither tells the truth nor lies,
but hopes his cryptic glosses will endure
to take at least his younger readers by surprise.


John Lahr writes about Ingmar Bergman in The New Yorker, May 31,1999 ('The Demon-Lover: After six decades in film and theater, Ingmar Bergman talks about his family secrets and the invention of psychological cinema') . John Lahr says that Bergman said: 'I myself never felt myself young, only immature. As a child, I never associated with young people. I isolated myself from my peers and became a loner. When I had to formulate dialogue for my younger characters, I reached for literary clichés and adopted a coquettish silliness.'

5/31/99