How curiously interesting
how profoundly uninteresting 
these truly interesting times 
seem to a man of eighty.
His doing done, he spends his days
in being. Harder than it seems
since not being looms
in the sleepless fell of night,
nagging in the flesh, and desire
still tricks the mind. Being?
For the man of forty, so busy
amidst his traffic of doing,
the old man became a nag.
My life is more difficult 
than yours, he whined. After all,
we owe each other nothing.
Alone in being, that being
that liars and fools often say
is the Brahmin they know,
an old man can hear the hush
forever rushing in his ears
if he listens for the noise
of silence itself. Like silence
in a sultry forest glade
where only a trembling cloud
of silent gnats drifts in 
then out of a shaft of sunlight, 
where fitful splashes spurting 
from a waterfall’s trickle
realize stillness. The curse
and the blessing are one,
and vanity lies in that illusion
of choice. Time to be alone