They Tell Me...

They tell me, "You reached old age,
You crossed fifty, you turned the page,
You are now feeble, tired and frail,
Old as the hills, a mast without sail."

They’[re all saying, that I am old,
"You're pathetic,"they keep saying,
"Your time is past," I’m being told
"Don't kid yourself, quit denying..."

I say to them, "I am young as yet,
With many a love still to forget,
The old-timer is that youngster
That just sits there, like an elder...

Bear in mind, that there's sixty,
There is seventy, also eighty,
Compared to those, my dear friend,
Fifty is childhood, never an end...

Going through this fleeting life,
This brief world of finite moments,
In this cosmos of old and new,
Even a hundred is too few --

So, what is fifty years...?"

------------- Karlene Chachani

Translated by Tatul Sonentz