Last Words to Cavafy

`Imperfect? Does anything human escape That sentence. And after all, we get along.'

But now we have fallen on evil times. Ours is the age of goody-goodiness.

They are planning to kill the old Adam. Perhaps at this moment the blade is entering.

And when the old Adam has ceased to live, What part of us but suffers a death?

The body still walks and talks.

The mind performs its mental movements.

There will be no lack of 'younger generation' To meet the state's needs. Skills shall abound.

They inherit all we have to offer.

Only the dead Adam is not transmissive.

They will spread their narrowness ink space. The yellow mobil their whitewashed suburbs.

He died in our generation, the old Adam. Are our children ours, who did not know him?

We go to a near-by country; for juke-boxes and Irony. The natives say: 'Dirty old tourists!'

We return, and our children twitch their nostrils.

Were we as they Wish, few of them would be here!

Too good for us, the evil times we have fallen on.

Our old age shall be spent in disgrace and museums.

D. J. ENRIGH1