The Sixties [by Bill Wadsworth]

The Sixties

 

The cruelties of April

            and mornings in America still

                        reverberate even now

on the further side of the hill

            with our sixties behind us

                        and the day getting late

and the old wars behind us

            and our hair turned white

                        there's a late snowfall

melting fast into the Hoosic

            River there's a natural bridge

                        the water rushes below and through

and down over ledges into a gorge

            so deep no one can see how

                        it ends or if it ends at all

(4//22/23)

"The Sixties" is a 15-line sonnet written in response to a birthday sonnet sent to me by my old friend and collaborator David Lehman.  The poem looks back to the historical experience we've shared, and forward to the time when inevitably we ourselves will be history. 

-- Bill Wadsworth

Comments

[Pris Campbell]

So very good. Well written and easy to identify with.

[Kyril Alexander Calsoyas]

Bittersweet elegy for the olde days Mr. Wadsworth. One could well distill that experience, as you do, to the melting of an intricate snowflake, neither more nor less.

Your sonnet leads back to another song, which led back to another song, which led back to another song.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
by Robert Herrick 1625

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

[Walter Carey]

A beautiful lyric that mingles the 1960s and the 60s in one's own life (not necessarily spent in the East 60s). A refutation, too, of "don't look back" as an injunction.

[David Lehman]

I love Herrick's poem categorically and find myself in total agreement with Walter Carey.

[Bill Wadsworth]

Many thanks to Pris Campbell, Kyril Calsoyas, and Walter Carey! And of course to the extraordinary David L.

[Alan Ziegler]

Bill and David, I missed you two in the glory Sixties but caught up in our sixties (and seventies), and revisit you in my Municipal Gallery, "Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon."

[Monica Reed]

This sonnet took me back to all the mixed emotions of the 60's and the moments of peace I had contemplating pastoral scenes to offset the chaotic news. The last two lines evoked my mood at that time.

[David Lehman]

Thank you for the great comments, Monica and Alan!

[Bill Wadsworth]

Thanks so much, Monica and Alan!