Massacre, Not Battle Poem by gershon hepner

More like a massacre than battle,
old age is when they lead us off
not in a cattle-car like cattle
to slaughter-houses beyond Bahnhof,
but on our walkers, in our chairs
whose wheels roll on cold, timeless sand
down hourglasses steep as stairs,
and though our carers may demand
that we be treated with compassion
to assuage their conscience, we
are slowly tortured until, ashen
as horsemen before après-ski,
we slide down slopes on which we used
to ride before surrendering to
the symptoms that old age produced
before the massacre came due.
Only those who can create
not only children but great art
may live beyond their sell-by date
once death upsets the cattle cart.

Inspired by a quotation from “Everyman” by Philip Roth: “Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.” This quotation appears in an article on Philip Seymour Hoffman by Lynn Hirschberg (“A Higher Calling”) in the NYT Sunday Magazine on December 12/21/08. Hoffman says he was thinking of this line when playing the role of Charlie in “Synechdoche” adding: “In 80 years no one I’m seeing now will be alive. Hopefully, the art will remain.”

12/29/08