Song 92: Elderly

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
The hand is smaller than it used to be
The metacarpals closer to the surface
And the skin — the skin has become
A topographic map of every time
This hand reached for something
And sometimes caught it

I used to grind mountains
I used to be the thing the clocks were afraid of
Now I am the park bench
And the pigeons
And the hour between three and four
That nobody claims
And I have never been happier

The prefrontal cortex has simplified its filing system
It used to keep everything
Now it keeps: her face
The name of the bread we like
And the bench
And that's the whole archive
And the archive is complete

[Pre-Chorus]
And the hand reaches over
The way it has reached over
Every afternoon on this bench
For eleven years
Or eleven billion
I genuinely can't remember
And the not remembering
Is the first mercy time has shown me

[Chorus]
L'amour des vieux, l'amour des vieux
The love that stopped trying to impress the room
L'amour des vieux, l'amour des vieux
Two people and a bench and an afternoon
The hand that held the world
Now holds another hand
And the world fits inside it
Better than it ever did
When the hand was grand

[Verse 2]
She tells me the same story every Thursday
About the summer and the bicycle
And the dog that followed her to school
And every Thursday I hear it new
Because the hippocampus has forgiven us
Both of us
For being old enough to repeat ourselves
And young enough to mean it every time

The dopamine doesn't spike anymore
It plateaus
Which the textbooks describe as decline
But the textbooks have never sat on a bench
And felt the afternoon
Agree with them so gently
That the agreement itself
Was the pleasure

[Pre-Chorus]
And the hand is still there
And the bread is in the bag
And the pigeons have opinions
About the bread
And we have opinions about the pigeons
And this is the economy
Of the last good country
We will ever live in

[Chorus]
L'amour des vieux, l'amour des vieux
The love that stopped trying to impress the room
L'amour des vieux, l'amour des vieux
Two people and a bench and an afternoon
The hand that held the world
Now holds another hand
And the world fits inside it
Better than it ever did
When the hand was grand

[Bridge]
I was the Titan
I was the grind
I was the thing that everything
Was measured against and found short


Now I am measured against the bench
And found exactly the right height
And the right temperature
And the right speed
Which is no speed at all


She squeezes my hand
And the squeeze says
I know who you were
And I love who you are
And who you are
Is an old man on a bench
With bread in a bag
And that's enough
That's enough
That was always going to be enough

[Outro]
L'amour des vieux
The bench is warm