by Paul Muldoon

To think you lived ten years without a wife
to frown on your dancing that newfangled jitterbug
or taking a penknife
to an ounce of walnut plug

or a scuffle hoe, bejapers, to scutch.
To think you lived ten years without a wife
and a wife’s touch
whilst holding your hands to the fire as if fending off

a future in which scutch would indeed be rife
in your twin–bedded crypt.
To think you lived ten years without a wife
who’d by now outstripped

you in dying as in whatever–it’s–called.
Losing ground since she had to scutch and
loosestrife,
she might have been all the more galled
to think you lived ten years, bejapers, without a wife.

by Paul Muldoon

Now autumn was bleeding face–down into winter
in Creevelough and Minterburn,
the big–boned cattle we’d turned out to wander
the high meadows must finish in the barn

lest they sink to their hocks in mud,
now autumn was bleeding face–down into winter.
Back in the 1950s we’d imagined the Scud
and a Russian rip–off of the Sidewinder

would perpetuate our sense of wonder
by consigning warfare firmly to the empyrean.
Now autumn was bleeding face–down into winter
our commanders were no less prone

to optimism than Sisera the Canaanite
at Mount Tabor, who watched his artillery go under
yet hoped to somehow stave off his plight,
now autumn was bleeding face–down into winter.

by Max Layton

I love this life I’m leaving
That’s the trochee long and short of it
The iambic short and long of it
Though measureless my grieving

I salute spring’s muddy best
This host of dactyl daffodils
Though darling buds of May may bless
Mosquitoes and other anapests

Enough! No pun is worth
My death; no joke can wake the dead
Some spring the earth’s rebirth
Will mud my grinning head

I love winter, summer, fall
But April is the cruelest love of all

by Max Layton

I thought I’d sing a song of love
Instead I wrote of pain
I thought I’d praise my younger days
Instead I watched them wane

I thought, instead of discontent
I’d sing of harmony
I never meant a long lament
Of such solemnity

I’m sorry if these winter lines
Engrave your summer eyes
Old age will change you too in time
And won’t apologize

If death’s the end of life’s design
I walk downhill each step I climb