Age and After

Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus
And rejoice,
Not because you are young
But because you are old!
Yes, I am forgetting all
The bright mornings of the world
And the thousand thousand moments
When the sun confronted me
And for all that I shout out Gaudeo,
Gaudeamus, let us rejoice!

And because this travelling circus
Sweeps me on with the corrupt,
The filthy and the loveable,
Because of the broken promises,
The missed shot, the dropped shuttle,
The spasm in the spine and the wild insult
And the wall-eyed hatred of those
Who do not know me and will not now,
And because of the men and woman
I have never known but love
For what they sang or wrote,
I shout out gaudeo, gaudeamus.

And now in Autumn it rains petals and birds,
I rejoice. And, yes, gaudeo, that we are
Old together and laughing at misheard jokes
And sleeping in one bed and not one
Piled of earth and flowers. And so I rejoice
In the quality of our ending and our becoming,
May it be a merry tale for others,
May they cry out gaudeamus igitur!