Flaming Youth
I am a youthful mariner
And nearly ninety-three,
My father is Methusaleh
Or so it seems to me.
He's just received his pension
But mine's not in the post:
Condemned to hunt the albatross
I sail around the coast.
There was time when I'd retire
When merely sixty-five
Provided I could prove to you
That I was still alive:
My beard would be half-matted,
My mouth a mass of drool,
But sixty-five is now the age
When I completed school.
At twenty-one they licensed me
To ride in pedal cars;
At forty-five, I learned to spell,
And also my three Rs.
At seventy, a juvenile,
I started downing booze,
And hung around the precincts,
Flashing my tattoos.
At eighty I was married,
And gained a job. The truth
Is that I can't remember
My hopeless, mis-spent youth.
My grandpa writes some doggerel,
And posts it up each week,
But then of course the fellow is
A venerable antique.
Millennia mean nothing.
A century's not clever.
I am a youthful mariner
Condemned to sail forever.
