Hi, My name is melinda and I have been searching for a poem for my psyc. class in college. Our instructor mentioned a certain poem that describes what life would be like if we aged in reverse.. Such as starting out life as a very old broken down person and gradually through life grew younger until you were just a twinkle in someones eye.. She had no recall on the Author or specific lines from the poem, but said it was very well known and a wonderful description of life, so I would like to find and read it. I was wondering if by chance someone there might know of this poem and could direct me to where I might find it, or know who the author is? Any clues would be helpful, I have been searching online for days and turned up nothing...
Thank you so much
Melinda

Are you sure it's a poem? Martin Amis's novel Time's Arrow has this device at its centre and I've come across SF stories like it.

it sounds like the old "mork and mindy" television program. orkans hatched from large eggs physically mature and then got younger.

argo

I don't know it as a poem
.
this one ?
.
The Way Life Should Be!

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends.
I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What's that, a bonus?

I think the life cycle is all backwards.

You should die first, get it out of the way and then go to live in an old age home. Then you should get kicked out when you're too young, get a gold watch, and go to work. You should work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. Then you should do drugs, alcohol, party, and get ready for high school. After that you should go to grade school, become a kid, play, and have no responsibilities. Then you should become a little baby, go back into the womb, spend your last nine months warm, happy, and floating ... AND ...

... Finish Off Life as an Orgasm ...

Wonderful - who wrote it, and where do I sign up?

I remember watching - some 10 years ago - a great performance by
Olympia Dukakis ( and Jean Stapleton), in Fire in the dark,
a very cruel ( sorry about the word, but that was it) story about
aging.

In one scene - as she is told she is not to live on her own any more,
but her children decided she is going to be taken to a 'home' ,
she says :
- just the other day I was driving my car
- just the other day I was preparing a Thanks-giving dinner to 20 people
- that was just the other day

I feel the same sometimes
- just the other day I was so young !

A great brazilian poet wrote :

Portrait
I didn't have the face I have today
so calm, so sad, so thin
nor these empty eyes, nor the bitter lips
I didn't have such strengthless hands
so still and cold and dead
I didn't have this heart that never shows itself
I never came to realize this change - so simple, so certain - so easy
In which mirror my face was lost ?

Retrato

Eu não tinha esse rosto de hoje,
assim calmo, assim triste, assim magro,
nem estes olhos tão vazios, nem o lábio amargo
eu não tinha estas mãos sem força,
tão paradas e frias e mortas
eu não tinha este coração que nem se mostra
eu não dei por esta mudança tão simples, tão certa, tão fácil
em que espelho ficou perdida minha face?"

Cecília Meireles

Thanks, Ilza., especially for the Portrait poem.

Talking of mirrors, a while ago I had to clean one which is rather flimsy and badly hung, so took it off the wall and cleaned it on the floor. Never again!!! If you put a mirror on the floor and look down into it your face ages about 20 years - or at least mine did. If at the same time you are exerting yourself to polish it and indadvertantly look, the effect is even worse! Ever tried to clean a mirror with your eyes closed?

I've always reckoned the Almighty knew what he was doing, making the eyesight deteriorate as the wrinkles really start to show, and that modern man, having invented reading, driving etc has only himself to blame for the unexpected side-effects.

Marian2, Are you just now learning this? That's what you get for cleaning! I turned all my mirrors to the wall several years ago. Of course, that doesn't prevent my accidentally catching a glimpse in store windows or in some cleverly hidden mirror obviously placed for young, thin people.

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike .
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

-- Sylvia Plath

Glenda - the reason I am just learning this is because I don't clean very often, and when I do I don't concentrate very hard!