I celebrated my eightieth birthday this week, and yesterday ran a carefully measured road mile in 8 minutes 37 seconds, which in age-adjusted terms is not that bad but in absolute terms is pathetic. I am an absolutist.
So this week’s choice was an easy one. It’s not entirely apposite. I never had, nor am ever likely to have, a chair nearest to the fire – I see myself more as a presence in the outer dark, quietly listening – but the general sentiment will do for me.
The Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner
Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.
Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.
There’s not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.
W.B.Yeats
David Sutton 
thank you for sharing this Yeats poem and a new one to me
p.s. you are fortunate to be able to run that fast, to be an absolutist when age to requote a quote, ‘doth make cowards of us all’!
Ha, never mind your Hamlet, I go with Duke Vincentio: ‘Be absolute for death: either death or life/Shall thereby be the sweeter.’
Congratulations.
Good choice of poem – that last verse !
Happy 80th birthday, David.
Hope you had a special day.
And good on your still getting out for a run!
Judy Fanselow I Mob 027 439 4325
Thank you, Judy.
Happy Birthday !
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div>Hope you’re not spitting
Thank you, Rosemary. No, no spitting, just a bit of sneezing this hay fever weather, but ‘I sneeze into the face of Time’ doesn’t have quite the same ring.
Sir, you’re terrific, I doubt I could complete a mile in 35 mins however, I have severe Osteoarthritis which does not help !! Many years of health to you.
Thank you, Anne. Guess I’ve been lucky so far, unlike my poor wife who also has osteoarthritis and has had two new new hips and a new knee (hips are easy she says, knees not so much).
My mom bought a book of Yeats’ poems while in a Harvard book store on St Patrick’s Day many years ago and highlighted this poem as a favorite of hers.
As I’ve spent a lot of time with the poem and have come to a different interpretation than most (if not all) other folks. I believe that the pensioner is actually buried under the broken tree, not just an old man thinking about his past. The ultimate transformation by Time, if you will. There are several things that bring me to that interpretation:
Not sure that anyone else would ever agree with me, but that’s how I read it these days. I’m sure my perspective may transfigure some more with Time…
Thanks for sharing such a great poem.
Interesting. I must admit that interpretation had never occurred to me. One problem with it, of course, is that the dead don’t do a lot of spitting. I think I have to stick with the more obvious take that the man is simply old, that you might in fact seek shelter under a broken tree if there was nothing better around, and that in the last verse he is simply identifying himself with the broken tree. And ‘Lamentation’ is by no means restricted to an association with Jesus – there is, for example, a famous Old Irish poem called ‘The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare’, where the woman is still very much alive; it is possible that Yeats was influenced by that. I might feature my translation of it some time.
Anyway, glad you approved the choice.