Old men should write, not the young in their prime:
their past’s too shallow to enfranchise them.
Just so they write of lasting things, not whine
about love’s fleeting, red-rose-bordered hem.
Poets have sung of love since Homer’s time
and women have been pleased to find their name
immortalised in some fond poet’s rhyme.
But old men should write poetry that strikes like truth,
splitting the heart in two, searing the page,
leaving an ache worse than a raging tooth.
Let them write verse that thunders, lines that rage
at having served the sentences of innocent youth
only to be set free by crooked age,
learning, too late, life’s great Untruth.
In the first two lines (now overly replicated on this blog), the speaker presents a seemingly decisive statement about age (though not a precise number or range) and its particular relevance to writing. The “young in their prime” may suggest a young person with a certain attitude—confident, assertive—or it may suggest an age range which extends to “middle-age” (considered prime by many). The speaker, a person past that “prime” young stage, assumes a knowing stance and scoffs at both the attitude and age of the young writer telling him his past (experience) isn’t substantial enough to empower him to write. In lines three and four, the speaker continues to lay out exactly what qualifies the old to write: it is that they can write of lasting things, not fleeting ones. But the “Just so” at the beginning of line three may well be a warning even to the old writer that he should write of his (lasting) experiences, and not succumb to the temptation to write of fleeting things, such as the “red-rose-bordered hem.” The suggestion and the sentiment there in that image is that though the young may see the quick end of passion as something to whine about, there is more to tell. And the old writer must remember that only he can tell it and he should. In lines five, six, and seven the speaker, in a dismissive tone, traces a history of love poetry back to the Greco-Roman era when women were pleased to find their names immortalized in rhyme. This rather shallow, traditional end of love poetry (the speaker seems to suggest) is just the thing a young writer (or a careless old writer) may seek to emulate. So in lines 8 through 14 the speaker pronounces the type of writing that should preempt that tradition. The type of poetry old men should write must strike (like truth), split, sear, and rage, but not at love. The preemptive poet must strike, split, sear, and rage at having been freed from the punishment of innocence (youth), and for having attained knowledge (at the crookedness of age) of life’s greatest lesson. It appears the enfranchisement for the old writer lies in his ability (capability) to write about experiences which have brought him to passionate anger, and to the realization (too late) of a great untruth. The poem’s moral statement then may be that old men should write because they can possibly rid (preempt) the tradition of love poetry of its whininess, and its fond tributes to women, and provide instead a truth about life that is forceful, honest, and one they paid a dear price to earn. This wretched condition, the speaker seems to suggest, must be worth the privilege of authorship. That may be all he is left with to console himself. Like the message, the speaker’s language is mostly unambiguous. The images and references are knowable, clear. The “poetic” construction is in the end rhymes—prime-whine-time, them-hem, truth-tooth-youth, page-rage-age—which provide some movement from the poem’s otherwise pragmatic prose. And, the only possible obscurity is in the poem’s last phrase “life’s great Untruth,” which this reader is proud to say she finds obscure because she is not yet at that wretched stage of ultimate knowledge. Amen. Get your own copy... For its provocative and clear moral statement, I choose "Old Men Should Write" as the best in Gilkes’s collection, titled Joanstown and Other Poems.
If you’d like to read more of Gilkes's poetry, be the first to add your thoughtful comment on the poem, and I’ll send you a copy of the collection.
Read more about Michael Gilkes here.
