Vieux Matelot. (Translation) . Poem by Michael Walker

This the portrait of an old ex-sailor, who has been to many countries, known the pleasures of the flesh in the East (Asia) and heard women pity him and love him. Now he is old, paralysed, and sitting in the sun on charity's chair, probably a rest home for the elderly. In the sun he dreams that the women he knew as a young man 'lament him everywhere'. A poem which is both personal-the sailor- and universal to old age, compared to youth. The problem of growing old after a happy youth. One poem I cannot forget.