Renewals
Renew, for me,
Heart, liver, kidneys, gallbladder,
Lungs, throat, knees,
All whatsoever.
Every seven years do it
For me.
Renew, you can, you do:
Make it all new
Nothing forget.
(You’re perfect, my lover said,
Thoughtful, caring, fine.
Only don’t change.)
New, not older new. New
Like an automobile:
New brakes, new engine, automatic
Gearbox, tires, radiator, fog lights,
Posh fabric seats, even directionals
And computer. Make it all new, like that!
No point in that,
The goddess speaks soft:
We need you new older
Each time until, overworked,
Desiccated, all parts now poorly rebuilt,
You fail, sink to nourish our ground
And let new new perfections emerge.
….
This poem is from the book What’s It Like To Be Old? by John Maynard (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/whats-it-like-to-be-old-by-john-maynard/
John Maynard is Professor of English Emeritus at NYU. He has published five non-fiction books, including three with Harvard and Cambridge, and many articles and has done a great deal of editing, including co-editing a journal with Cambridge for 26 years. He won the Thomas J. Wilson Prize of Harvard University Press for his biography of Robert Browning. He has written literary history and criticism, including a study of Charlotte Bronte and sexuality and a work on Victorian sexuality and religion. His latest study was on the theory of reading and readers. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and also a NEH Grant; recently he was given an Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who. He is a member of PEN.
During most of his adult life, he wrote some poems and planned to write more. As he neared retirement, he found time to write many more poems. He has been editing them for book publications for the past four years. What’s It Like To Be old? is the second of a number of books he has in hand. The first was a set of poems, Armando and Maisie (2025), about the improbable friendship between his dog and a homeless resident of Central Park. Much of his poetry was written while exploring the park with his dog. The present volume of poems reflects on the diversity of his own and others’ experiences of growing old.
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