OLD AGE
Old age is the condition that defines
our situation, underlining truth
we all must face, ignoring its deadlines
unless we search for elixirs of youth.
It is a necessary horror
for all who do not prematurely die,
any makes of one a schnorrer,
on borrowed time awry.
Judith Shulevitz reviews J. M. Coetzee’s “Elizabeth Costello” (Viking) in “Author Tour: The chilly woman at the center of J. M. Coetzee’s novel is a writer far more comfortable with abstraction than affect” (NYT, October 26,2003) . She writes:
Old age is for Coetzee what nausea was for Sartre: our defining condition, the necessary horror that grants us access to a moral existence.
I added the second quatrain on 1/31/10
10/26/03,1/31/10
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem