At A Dull Party Poem by Jan Struther

IN fifty years at most I shall be dead.
These jaws, which now grind hard to scotch a yawn,
Will gape unchecked; and in a clay-cold bed
Clamped fast, I'll wait a problematical dawn.
I have less than twenty thousand days to live-
Six hundred months, a bare half-million hours;
And each new breath, heedless and fugitive,
Another mouthful of my life devours.
Then, Christ! what spendthrift folly brought me here,
To breathe stale smoke, and drink, talk, think, small beer?