‘My body is dying, but my brain is still good.’
How should a man meet his death, but with terror and equanimity?
Tell us now the story of the Sixth Age of Man:
The age of his regrets, lived more in the past than the future;
The age of his decline, when the blood in his heart runs colder,
His skin wrinkles, his hair silvers, and his limbs begin to wither.
But who would listen to such a tale, that nobody wants to hear?
Too terrible for a child’s morning instruction;
Too tedious for an adult’s evening entertainment;
And which everyone, in their own time, will read one winter morning
Written in the fingered mist of the mirror in which they stare.
— Hong Kong, January 2025
• • • • •
The epigraph is from Sergei Bondarchuk’s film, Waterloo (1970), in which they are spoken by Rod Steiger in the role of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Seven Ages of Man were described by William Shakespeare in the famous lines beginning ‘All the world’s a stage’ from As You Like It (c. 1599); though the division can be traced back to Ancient Greece.
A Communist in Hong Kong 