~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Surviving Old Age

             E’possibile uscire vivi dall vecchiaia?

                                  —Valerio Magrelli, Exfanzia

Not by dying (or not dying),

not by counting blessings,

accepting decline (or denying it),

not by remaining youthful

in bearing or young at heart,

not by outlasting family

and friends. I'll tell you how I

did it: I moved to Carrboro.

In Carrboro undying is living

and no one knows your age

because even the babies look

wasted. In Carrboro, haven

and hell, you can't find me

unless you don't ask for me.

In Carrboro, now and again,

marigolds bloom lawlessly

and sunflowers shy away

from the sun. In Carrboro,

here and there, fifty-year-old

marathoners sit on your porch

waiting for you to hug them.

Carrboro, fountain of senescence,

paradise of despair, summum bonum

of cyanide cynicals, last resort of those,

like me, who stand on the corner

of Weaver and Main, waving. 

A scholar and writer, Gustavo Pérez Firmat is the David Feinson Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Columbia University, where he taught Latin American literature. His imaginative writing has been published in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Carolina Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Baltimore Review, and others. He has also published books of literary and cultural criticism, including A Cuban in Mayberry, Life on the Hyphen and Tongue Ties; a memoir, Next Year in Cuba, as well as poetry collections in Spanish and English, including Equivocaciones, Bilingual Blues, and Viejo Verde.