Wrinkled hands clutch worn wooden canes,
Shuffling past, unseen, unheard, unnamed.
You rush by, averting eyes from my weathered face,
Blind to the tapestry of years I've laced.

Once, I danced in Singapore's gilded halls,
Fled war's fury, scaled fortune's falls.
I loved a pilot who kissed the sky,
His crash, my heart's unending cry.

I wandered Europe's cobbled streets,
Penned verses of loss and bittersweet.
In Seville's sun, I found my stage,
A genteel beggar, an artful sage.

You see a crone, a burden, naught but old,
Not the tales of fire and ice I hold.
My eyes, though dimmed, have witnessed war and peace,
My voice, though soft, once made the mighty cease.

If I should stumble, fall upon the stone,
You'd rush to help, but only flesh and bone
Would you perceive – not spirit, not the soul
That burns still bright, though body's no longer whole.

You pat my hand, all pity, no real care,
Convinced that you'll never be caught in age's snare.
But time ticks on, relentless in its march,
And you too shall pass beneath its arch.

Remember, then, these words from one who knows:
Behind each lined face, a universe grows.
In every elder's step, a lifetime treads,
Invisible worlds crown our silver heads.

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:

‘Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

‘And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

‘For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, “Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.”’

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black, and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.