Stay With Me Till I'M 83 Poem by gershon hepner

Can’t you see that I should be
your date although I’m old?
Stay with me till I’m eighty-three.
Alone, the world feels cold,
but with you I may still feel warm.
until I’m ninety-five,
provided that I stay in form
and we’re both still alive.
I know that you’re compassionate.
Accept from me my passion,
and do not ever ration it,
for you will be in fashion,
and always give a thrill
to me, as well, I hope, as plenty
of love that I plan I will still will
have when I’m hundred twenty.
Forever fierce, I’ll make a beeline
to you, while feeling fired,
because you’re fabulously feline—
fired, unretired.

Inspired by a song that Eartha Kitt used to sing, “Too Young to Be Meant for Me, ” mentioned by Stephen Holden in the NYT, . December 256,2008 (“Forever Feline, Forever Fierce”) :
Once you possessed her, she would bestow her favors, but only at her discretion; she remained aloof. As with Ms. West, unabashed candor was central to her strategy. Young male suitors were jokingly advised to be patient until she had finished with their wealthy fathers. Singing “Too Young to Be Meant for Me, ” she brushed off a 20-year-old admirer by reminding him, “Can’t you see I’ve got a date with someone rich and 82? ”To one and all she would address “Speaking of Love, ” an early-’30s song by Vernon Duke and E. Y. Harburg that became one of her signatures. “Give me a frank account/How is your bank account? ” go the lyrics, which promise, “I’d be compassionate/If there was cash in it.” Or as this sultry emblem of avarice cooed in her 1953 Christmas hit, “Santa Baby, ” “One little thing I really need is the deed to a platinum mine.” Many years later Madonna, the so-called Material Girl, covered “Santa Baby.” But Madonna’s gold digger was only one of dozens of images through which she riffled. Ms. Kitt remained true to a fixed image established more than 50 years ago.


12/26/08