A brief rebuttal to
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
When you’re eighty-four, and wake up each day
With a creaky hip and a swollen foot,
With a body stiff, pretty much kaput,
You wonder at the lyrics of decay.
Our famous Bard revealed naiveté
With metaphors for age’s attributes—
Bare boughs, dark night, cold ash—the lyric roots,
The tender images for Death’s sure prey.
Of course, he didn’t take ten pills each day,
And “bare boughs” do not convey the sharp pain
Of arthritic stabs or dread entropy—
Neither “night” nor “ashes” image the weight,
The misery, the baleful strain, the drain
Of prepping for a colonoscopy.
(3/21/14)