A Significant Birthday
 

Our own John's birthday (64) is tomorrow, Friday, 12/11. I suggest we all send him appropriate poetic tributes.

[Editing in] 16 lines or less, of course.

What, still alive at 64,
A pint-mad, print-glad lad like you?
You should have gone some years before
Amongst the many, not the few.

Your habits would have slain a clan
Of hardy Scotsmen ere their time,
So now you prove you are the man
Who cheats the odds to pull for prime.

Bottles and butts lie shed behind
The trail you long since vowed to blaze,
Yet here you stand, with unspent mind
And talents that shall yet amaze.

We honor you, soon-pensioneer,
Whose lines must Brown and Labour vex,
And pray you last another year
To get in full your monthly checques!

Isn't today the tenth? We'll have to write in a hurry!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I'm Sixty Four
~ The Beatles

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.


--Many happy returns to our Vancouver Scottish poet and actuary.

God what a cock-up I have made.
Turns out it's our London Scottish poet and non-actuary. Happy birthday John W.

If this is the same mountain I heard read and talked to at West Chester 2009, he has a heavier head of hair than I, and looks as young as I want to. My clan has always featured attractive pattern baldness. We glory in our need for striking stetsons, whereas he can survive as a bare-headed boy at the drop of a hat. Well, congratulations, and the next time I know that I and my wife shall be in Victoria, I'll inform him too, so he can come into town & view the capitol building at night with us, and connect the dots.

If this is a different John, he won't know what I writing about, but congratulations anyway.

Duh. Me too. Oh well, woot-the-wool, so it goes.

Sam's effort is unbeatable, but I will do my humble best.

Dearest John W.,
let it not trouble you
that we're confused about
whom to address
now, and in verse, in re
somebody's natal day,
and, as a consequence,
leave things a mess!

Facebook has straightened out
what we were wrong about:
Whitworth's the man to con-
gratulate here.
Let's get a start again,
taking a sharper pen:
Raise for John W.
this light-verse cheer.

John

Sixty-four years pass, and one wonders just
how a man lives up to his Christian name.
Does he shout repentance, rolling in dust
and ash, eating too little for his frame?
Might he give in to numinous visions,
revelatory tales of open doors?
A man whose banner would lead divisions
to the far North and, surely, other wars?
Or his acclaim so great that he would preach
at a king's death but end with his head flung
into the Thames? No ... more likely he'd teach
verse, named for the one with the golden tongue.




Happy birthday, John.

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me?
 

Dear John,

I'm sniffling so as I pen you this letter.
It's so hard to tell you:
It doesn't get better!

Your bones have gone wanky, the telly's all bleary.
When it's time for amour,
Guess what? You're too weary!

Your heart's out of sinus, no blanket for Linus.
The feeling is oozing all out of your toes.
Is it callous to say: that's how it goes?
The tallies are all reading minus.

(But you are now officially the most profound blow hard on the block!)

As one 64 to another, Happy Birthday!

Well thank you one and all. I am touched. A birthday thought to all of us from an old friend of mine who used to win occasional Speccie comps (prose ones). I don't know whether they get The Spectator in Heaven. he liked French food and drink which I am sure they DO get. Anyway, he aid, 'Who wants to be ninety?' (He was nearly that). The answer is, 'Everybody who is eighty-nine.' A GREAT TRUTH.

Yes, I know about the Canadian John Whitworth. He once got a cheque of mine. Of course he sportingly sent it back, little wotting the countless Canadian dollars... Now, wellwishers, don't forget there is a competition to do. I've done mine. I did it when I was still sixty-three, composing the bulk of it while swimming slowly up and down the beautiful, Swedish designed baths of Faversham. Yes, that's the place where the famous Elizabethan murder took place.

Aquatic John

Ideally, the parts in capital letters would be shouted out by a chorus of school children.

More Happy Birthday

Persnickety Doge of dotage and piety,
Enrico Dandolo, sacking sobriety,
blitzes Byzantium under the hope he'll
topple the populous Constantinople – AT NINETY!

Poetical Merwin, that octogenarian
Buddhist, irenical egalitarian,
chases Erato and always out wits her
by snagging his second, his second, Pulitzer – AT EIGHTY-TWO!

Clint Eastwood increases in cinema menace, since
Hollywood’s heroes grow darker in senescence;
Wraith of the Year and a notable spectre
as a man with no name now named Best Director – AT SEVENTY-FOUR!

Then there's John Whitworth. Well, what has he done?
No Laureateship, no Tanning prize won;
but, speaking equinely, I’d still place a bet
for he's just SIXTY-FOUR, so there's hope for him yet.

When You're Sixty-four

(mercifully shorter than the original)

When you get old and losing your hair—
though some say you’re not—
will you still be posting all the Speccie Comps,
leading us through many happy romps?
Will you keep bringing to D&A
a wit worth more and more?
will you still heed us,
will you still lead us,
when you’re sixty-four?

We’ll be older too
and if you say the word
we’ll slog on with you.

Send us a message, post us a post,
that you'll stay our Mod.
Tell us you'll still put up with our schlock,
Yours sincerely, your faithful flock,

praising our ditties, exchanging our pounds,
who could ask for more?
Will you still heed us,
will you still lead us,
when you’re sixty-four?

Well frankly sixty-four is nothing at all. My hero, the great and good J.L. Carr wrote two of his nine splendid novels when he was just under and just over eighty. My other hero, P.G. Wodehouse, died, pen in hand, at the age of ninety-three. The novels he wrote in his eighties and nineties are just as good, indeed they are indistinguishable from, the novels he wrote in his fifties or his thirties. The secret is to get into a groove, you see. I'm in one. A groove. Thanks one and all. The only one not welcome at the party is Death and I haven't spotted him - yet.

I write about him constantly. Buttering him up, don't you know.

Eminent John, you are worthy of wit,
and I am too busy for verse.
Here’s all of the praise I’ve had time to commit.
Take comfort—it could have been worse.

Best wishes,
Susan

You can't pretend that 64
is not significantly more
than nothing, John. You can't ignore
the candle-smoke, at least.

So let us celebrate your birth
and tell you what your wit's been worth
to connoisseurs of metered mirth.
We're glad you're not deceased.

John, our man at 64
might wake up then slightly bedsore
or strain more with a paramour,
but he’ll need less effort to score
the laughs as he deploys the goldened wit
worth more than prize from any Speccie skit.


Happy Birthday, John! :)

Why that's lovely Marion.

And the others too. Thank you one and all.

Why is 64 in particular a significant birthday?

Perhaps because it is the last birthday any of us is likely to have that has an integer cube root?

But surely another integer square root or two is within reach!

Anyway, if we want to get mathematical about it, I believe that when you turn 67 you will once again be in your prime.

Happy birthday!

On the 2nd anniversary of your 32nd year,
I’m sending you a cyber cake, a case of cyber beer.
In case you don’t like either, John, I sent a gift receipt.
exchange it if you need to, simply press and hold delete.

Happy Birthday!
Donna