Belie Your Age Poem by gershon hepner

Belie your age so you can soar
but do not let nostalgia drag
the spirit and become a bore
by waving your memorial flag.

If swimming with ideas you think
of what has passed recalling youth
instead soaring you will sink,
because the future is the truth.

Panache should make you scintillate
though old age would drag you down,
for time that lives has no dead weight,
and he who floats will never drown.



Kristin Hohenadel write in The Los Angeles Times Calendar, April 14,2002, about Mstislav Rostropovich’s 75th birthday. After a concert the music critic of London’s Evening Standard called him a “birthday boy of scintillating panache” while the critic of the Sunday Observer wrote: “Britten’s old friend Rostropovich belies his age to soar again.

4/15/02