ABSENCES

    by Walter Nash

The ludicrous bewilderment of age,
the not  remembering names, 
losing the track of life, which potters on
mumbling behind one´s back

waiting for one to return 
from a state of trance, a place that jesters call
"away with the fairies” – 
this is a humbling and vexatious thing.

How to excuse these absences of mind?
Perhaps to say, that quitting a fallen world 
is the business of the soul,
and fairies a first move, forecasting angels.