Nobody who knows me would think for one moment that I have a dread of untidiness. If the young think me obsolescent, that is their problem, just an irritant, not a reason to go fossicking about trying to look with it.
None of that makes this poem any the less touching, even though I am puzzled why ones 61st birthday should hold this particular significance for the poet Alan Brownjohn
Entering My Sixty-second year
I’ve always had this dread of growing old
In untidiness: a worn tobacco pouch;
The edges of a tablecloth rubbed & frayed
Into tassels; accumulators; a deep drawer
Full of tram maps & busted pipes; a couch
Where a dusty cushion pictures an esplanade
In faded Devon; all my grandfather’s store.
Long after he was dead, & his goods were sold
(But mostly chucked away) those hoarded treasures
Seemed what it meant to live on to his age,
And I was bound to end up with a cruel
And pointless load of close-at-hand bric-a-brac
Stuck round me, like toys fixed in the cage
Of a tamed songbird. Dud capsules of lighter fuel,
Old tins, ancient Pelicans, today brings back
The dreadful sight of them, an old man’s pleasures
(And his failures) – I can feel his presence
In the junk in my own room. So now I’m able
To picture myself his age, I’ll up & set
The VTR, spread brand new books among
The dustless disks on my working table,
And fight back with Order; hoping to forget
That because this is my life, my style, the young
May see it as my trash, my obsolescence
