Old PEople's Home

For various reasons this poem really resonates at the moment.


Old People's Home
W. H. Auden

All are limitory, but each has her own 
nuance of damage.  The elite can dress and decent themselves, 
    are ambulant with a single stick, adroit 
to read a book all through, or play the slow movements of 
    easy sonatas. (Yet, perhaps their very 
carnal freedom is their spirit's bane: intelligent 
    of what has happened and why, they are obnoxious 
to a glum beyond tears.)  Then come those on wheels, the average 
    majority, who endure T.V. and, led by 
lenient therapists, do community-singing, then 
    the loners, muttering in Limbo, and last 
the terminally incompetent, as improvident, 
    unspeakable, impeccable as the plants 
they parody. (Plants may sweat profusely but never 
    sully themselves.)  One tie, though, unites them: all 
appeared when the world, though much was awry there, was more 
    spacious, more comely to look at, it's Old Ones 
with an audience and secular station.  Then a child, 
    in dismay with Mamma, could refuge with Gran 
to be revalued and told a story.  As of now, 
    we all know what to expect, but their generation 
is the first to fade like this, not at home but assigned 
    to a numbered frequent ward, stowed out of conscience 
as unpopular luggage. 
                                       As I ride the subway 
    to spend half-an-hour with one, I revisage 
who she was in the pomp and sumpture of her hey-day, 
    when week-end visits were a presumptive joy, 
not a good work.  Am I cold to wish for a speedy 
    painless dormition, pray, as I know she prays, 
that God or Nature will abrupt her earthly function?