Ballade of an Elderly Fogey
Twitter who will, I cannot hear.
Spotify, Snapchat fail me quite.
TikTok is some remote frontier.
Cursive is all that I can write.
Here I sit like a troglodyte,
Unable to meet High Tech demands.
One thought eases my painful plight:
I can tell time on a clock with hands.
I can remember the very year
JFK died; the sickening fright
When the Twin Towers fell; the rousing cheer
I gave when Nixon resigned—all right!
Yes, I’m older than anthracite,
But I heard all of the coolest bands.
I was in Woodstock at its height
And I can tell time on a clock with hands.
For my lost youth I shed no tear:
I was a brilliant neophyte.
Everyone swore I’d have no peer,
Whether I chose to paint or write.
Now I’ve journeyed through bloom and blight,
Boom and bust, and in many lands—
And in the end my gift was slight:
I can tell time on a clock with hands.
Young people, thinking yourselves so bright,
Here is what none of you understands:
I may be vanishing into night,
But I can tell time on a clock with hands.