William Adolphe Bouguereau Hay Maker 1869 oil on canvas Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh |
William Adolphe Bouguereau Youth and Love 1877 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
Honoré Daumier Troubadour ca. 1868-73 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Edgar Degas The Bath ca. 1895 oil on canvas Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh |
Henri Fantin-Latour Still Life - Corner of a Table 1873 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
Henri Fantin-Latour Un Atelier aux Batignolles 1870 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Valpinçon Bather 1808 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Valpinçon Bather (detail) 1808 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres La Grande Odalisque 1814 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
Édouard Manet Portrait of Émile Zola 1868 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Bathing Nymphs and Child ca. 1855-60 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
Antoine-Jean Gros Générale-Conte François Fournier-Sarlovèze before 1812 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
Edgar Degas After the Bath ca. 1890-95 pastel National Gallery, London |
Edgar Degas After the Bath ca. 1886 pastel Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome |
Edgar Degas After the Bath ca. 1885-90 pastel Musée du Louvre |
An Entertainment for W.S.Graham for Him Having Reached Sixty-Five
What are you going to do
With what is left of yourself
Now among the rustling
Of your maybe best years?
This is not an auto-elegy
With me pouring my heart
Out into where you
Differently stand or sit
On the Epidaurus steps.
What shall I say to myself
Having put myself down
On to a public page?
Where am I going now?
And where are you going
Tricked into reading
Words of my later life?
Let me pretend you are
Roughly of my age.
Are you a boy or a girl?
And what has happened to you?
Look at the chirping various
leaves of Mr Graham's
Spanking summer. Where are
You at? I know my face
Has changed. My hair has blanched
Into a wrong disguise
Sitting on top of my head.
Beside each other perched
On the Epidaurus steps.
Where am I going to go?
Shall I rise to follow
The thin sound of the goats
Tinkling their bells?
– W.S. Graham (1983)
The poet died in 1986, three years after the occasion of this Entertainment.