Worrying
is like crumpling paper;

it reveals you
to faces in the dark

Old age
comes
with long horizons
and a curving Earth;
many ways to die,
pens hovering
over death certificates,
eager to hit the surface
to make it official,
give it legality
and a medical explanation,
allowing the corpse
its final procedure;
a handling with care
of the thing
which was once
a theoretical and rather abstract entity
we love to label “person”;
now pure waste,
to be incinerated
or put in the ground as compost

A new month
is an uncertainty

This time her name is May,
see if she lasts

Young people's skeletons
give a lot of leverage,
while next step for an oldtimer
is an innocence
seldom contemplated

Cannot deny
harbouring some end thoughts,
although perhaps unfair
to a life holding up very well,
but fellow fighters fall all around,
or fall into silence,
not much more to be said,
the circles on the water
moving inwards
while the universe
accelerates its expansion;
dark matters!

A foreteller on Connaught Circle
in Delhi
in December 1972
grabbed my hand,
giving me a forced prophecy:
82 years!
- But that place in time
seems farther and farther away
the closer I approach:
When you get older,
time speeds up
but life slows down