The Day I Turned Seventy

Seventieth birthday In a revolving restaurant On Space Needle in Seattle I didn't ask for it It came from nowhere as a surprise My daughter planned in secret Isn't that Grace? The place revolved Skyscrapers around blinked Behind them there were unseen mounts Hiding in the shifting clouds In deep meditation In the oblivion of the horizons A winter night dreamt Winds whooshed around the tower Clouds swirled all over My grandson slept in his pram unaware Yet I saw him smile Snow-flakes populated his dreams With a lighted Christmas tree And jingling bells galore What is dream And what is reality In a restaurant called the world In perpetual circumambulation Of a reality it never can fathom? Waiters with over-filled trays Navigated between impatient clients Like acrobats, their lips stretched into perpetual smile Mouthing pleasantries right to style Did I spot among the customers Facsimiles of Hepburn Susan Hayward and an ageless Connery Or other stellar celebrities Sipping their spirits Gesticulating in heated talk Or lost in profound thought? I was lost in the midst of their dream commune Looking at the city's brilliance Laboring to locate unseen peaks Stars and the moon in the blanket folds of the night A street down snaked In a chain of lights And many others joined it The land below turned A mysterious splendorous beauty Of frantic fireflies Who gave them the rays On the seventieth birthday Of an insipid man? Thanks to Him Life is a hymn Seventy or seventeen No one knows when it ends Sing aloud till the show extends