The Aulde Grey Man

short poem about death

The aulde grey man at the end of my road

With the morning's ashes cold in his hair

Smokes his cigarettes to cancerous stubs

Surveying his stage with a tar-haggard stare.

 

"Be merry!" I'd say, if i'd seen not his eyes

That mirror past deaths between weary blinks

They speak only words in melancholy tomes

Each chapter ghostwritten by misfortune's ink.

 

Does summer pass silent to those deaf to joy,

Does autumn come sooner to those full of scorn?

Man's garb of black and woman's veiled eyes,

But never were children taught how to mourn.

 

There is an aulde man who stands on my road

With the evening's rambling fog in his hair

He smokes down his cigs to cancerous stubs

But only this morning, he wasn't there.