Throwback Thursdays at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on July 4th, 2011.

There are a number of very good poems about growing old. Yeats, of course, wrote a goodly number, but all poets if they live long enough find themselves moved to write about the process of aging. It is as inevitable as… as aging itself.

As a poet, Mark Strand belongs to that peculiar class of professional teacher/poets that has come to dominate poetry in particular and to a lesser extent literature in general. That he has spent his life in academia no doubt influences the language and themes of his work. He is truly an international poet and his poetry reflects it.

Strand has always been a bit of a struggle for me in much the same way that Robert Bly is. Their surrealistic poems can easily leave me cold and feeling like they are trying too hard. “The Remains” is not one of those poems. It has at its core an honest emotion that cannot be ignored.

On the 52nd 4th of July of my life, it seems like the perfect poem.

Enjoy!

The Remains
I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.