They Say Eyes Clear With Age.

Heads In The Women's Ward On Pillow After Pillow Lies The Wild White Hair And Staring Eyes; Jaws Stand Open; Necks Are Stretched With Every Tendon Sharply Sketched; A Bearded Mouth Talks Silently To Someone No One Else Can See. Sixty Years Ago They Smiled At Lover, Husband, First-born Child. Smiles Are For Youth. For Old Age Come Death's Terror And Delirium.

In Times When Nothing Stood But Worsened, Or Grew Strange, There Was One Constant Good: She Did Not Change.

Things Are Tougher Than We Are, Just As Earth Will Always Respond However We Mess It About.

In Everyone There Sleeps A Sense Of Life Lived According To Love.

Beneath It All, Desire Of Oblivion Runs: Despite The Artful Tensions Of The Calendar, The Life Insurance, The Tabled Fertility Rites, The Costly Aversion Of The Eyes From Death- Beneath It All, Desire Of Oblivion Runs.