The Seven Ages

Here is a poem by the well-accomplished poet, Louise Glück. It is called The Seven Ages and it is the title poem of her eleventh book. It is the cold distant eye of nostalgia on a life full of living. In a way, this whole brief beginning of eternity is only a dream from which we wake when we die. It is useless to try and consume a world we will leave so swiftly. "This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." - King Solomon


THE SEVEN AGES

In my first dream the world appeared
in the salt, the bitter, the forbidden, the sweet
In my second dream I descended

I was human, I couldn't just see a thing
beast that I am

I had to touch, to contain it

I hid in the groves,
I worked in the fields until the fields were bare --

time
that will never come again --
the dry wheat bound, caskets
of figs and olives

I even loved a few times in my disgusting human way

and like everyone I called that accomplishment
erotic freedom,
absurd as it seems

The wheat gathered and stored, the last
fruit dried: time

that is hoarded, that is never used,
does it also end?

In my first dream the world appeared
the sweet, the forbidden
but there was no garden, only
raw elements

I was human:
I had to beg to descend

the salt, the bitter, the demanding, the preemptive

And like everyone, I took, I was taken
I dreamed

I was betrayed:

Earth was given to me in a dream
In a dream I possessed it

- Louise Glück