I

That is no country for old men.  The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

                    II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

                    III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

                    IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

---Yeats. 

~~~

Gold, a constant element in our lives, the 

idea of perfection, indestructibility. You put 

the days of the sun behind you, the way you put 

your hat down on a sideboard when entering a house.

The day is done. 

You write these lines with half your mind thinking 

about the lecture in 17 minutes. You must become invisible 

again,find your way through it. Feigned intelligence, 

formality, the final glance in the mirror, tighten the 

knot around your throat, and pick up the hat again... 

~~~

The form of your writing is determined by technical glitches-

which is another way of saying: you don't know how it is 

determined!

'The truly wise man could enjoy the whole spectacle of the world from his armchair.'

---Pessoa. 

My armchair is nearly broken; it has seen better days. 

The springs are looser, have less resistance, and only 

tiredly and reluctantly return to their normal at-ease

shape. There's new upholstery, for sure, a dull 

chocolate brown that takes away any individuality

it once had, and a side of the arm rest needs to be

continuously nailed into place. 

From my window I do not see any people and nor do I

ever hear any noise from the other flats. Am I the only

human being living here, I wonder? Now and then I see a 

well-dressed administrator come out of a white door to a 

mysterious room, and there are the good-natured cleaners 

with their wet mops and shallow buckets of soapy water. 

There are hundreds of crows-or maybe just one-and they're 

very noisy. I wish I had a shotgun. I sometimes see a 

maulvi on a bike. Extra points?