Ghost of Youth

alfred eisenstaedt

Opera
T.S. Eliot

Tristan and Isolde
And the fatalistic horns
The passionate violins
And ominous clarinet;
And love torturing itself
To emotion for all there is in it,
Writhing in and out
Contorted in paroxysms,
Flinging itself at the last
Limits of self-expression.

We have the tragic? oh no!
Life departs with a feeble smile
Into the indifferent.
These emotional experiences
Do not hold good at all,
And I feel like the ghost of youth
At the undertakers’ ball.

excerpted from Inventions of the March Hare
[copyright Valerie Eliot, 1996]