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6
gerontic
Item in the paper:
`In people over sixty the
sweat glands have begun
to deteriorate.' It is
yet another touch
on the hair-trigger
of this horror at what
has been happening
to him.
How quietly
the small disasters arrive
and form up in this
irreversible disaster
old age. Every change
now, is for the worse.
`There's no future in it,'
he jokes to a smooth-faced
young friend, knowing they belong
to diff erent species now.
He'd been thinking
about the young waiter in
the Hemingway tale,
who declares, `An old man
is a nasty thing.' The kid's
exasperated: it's closing
time, his girlfriend
is waiting for him. The old
man, the one remaining
patron, quite drunk, has,
with his dignity
intact, just ordered
another brandy. The older