WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS wrote the words above in 1927, and Cormac McCarthy borrowed them for his 2005 novel with that opening line as its title. 1 2

Now, twenty years after McCarthy’s novel and eighteen years after the Coen Brothers’ movie adaptation of it, I dip my line in a looping stream of consciousness and fish for a thought suitable for the times that have mantled my latter years.

Yeats’ poem Sailing to Byzantium imagines an artist dissatisfied with the corporeal youth of his homeland, Ireland, and sets him on a voyage to a mystical land where “un-aging intellect” can moor in the assurance of lasting meaning. In McCarthy’s novel, an aging and guilt-plagued sheriff determines to bring justice to western lawless lands where selfish greed, unbridled power, and horrific violence defy an old idea: rule of law.

With the violence of McCarthy’s novel and the hopeful destination of Yeats’ poem on my mind, I sit this morning at my writing place and wonder how, or if, I may find meaning in a world that seems to have become no place for this old man.

I am not alone. I have talked with my friends. They are the dear counselors who have supported me for decades with their kind ears, keen minds, and thoughtful words. Some are my age, some older, some younger. I am fortunate; I am not a lonely old man.

But then last night the welled up sadness broke free, and my sweet companion and I held hands and wept. Not maudlin tears, but tears of grief. We had lost two friends, and another is very near his end.

I power up my computer and wait irritably as the machine blinks to life. I will write something. Maybe that will help. Fidgeting, I admire for a moment the old Remington Rand, perched as it is upon a pedestal beside my desk. I look at its carriage and keyboard; I see its red and black ribbon stretched across the arc of letters and numbers. I wonder why I don’t peck out my thoughts on the sheet of paper I have left in it. McCarthy used an old Olivetti. Worked for him. Yeats? I don’t know. I suspect a fountain pen.

The computer can do things the Remington never imagined, such as provide a selection of background music while I am writing. I look at the music menu. I will not want the softer, more orderly sounds of Beethoven’s quartets. Instead I will play the near-chaos of the Béla Bartók Fifth String Quartet. It seems appropriate for this morning.

As the music arrives, I reflect that I know these musicians, this quartet. I have dined with them, joked with them, thanked them stupidly “for practicing.” These are my musicians. My violinist, the masterful Englishman, his wife and second violinist, whom I have watched inspire student musicians in her studio, the founding cellist whose precision was nurtured in Bartók’s Hungary, and the young virtuoso violist whose intense musicianship seems to erupt from his soul. They are mine, and I know them as my people.

But they do not know how much life they have given to me.

I look again at the typewriter and mutter how it and I have something in common: We are both relics. The computer screen blinks with a new window as if vying for attention. I mutter to it, “You can’t contain my thoughts. You have to be upgraded every few years. See that old thing over there? It was always big enough for my thoughts.”

And then I am back to Yeats, and I am not sure of the poet’s ideas, not sure of my own thoughts, and unsure even if I should write about them. So, I step aside and read instead, Bartók still singing.

My coffee wanes as I consider Yeats’ poem, McCarthy’s novel, the Coen Brothers’ film and the haunting performance of Javier Bardem as a callous, remorseless, calculating killer. With a bolt gun like those used in slaughterhouses, he kills people as if they were cattle.

No country for old men.

And I face again last night’s tears, my partner’s warm and trembling hand in mine, my bare chest offering a place for her anguished cries to release. Let’s say we found a temporary haven from the storm, perhaps, I think, our own kind of Byzantium.

If this is no country for old men and women, where do we go? Where is comfort? Solace? Where is my soul and its redeeming clap of hands?

I decide I will write of Byzantium, but maybe not today. I will imagine a lost and empty city of castles, one for each soul, as John said Jesus said of his father’s house.4 I will tease a thought from Yeats, mull over McCarthy’s violence, find a word for comfort.

For now, I can think no deeper than this: We have our friends and our families. We have our musicians and our poets and our friends in far away places and our friends next door and down the streets. We have comfort and solace, not yet in answers, but in nibbles of ideas, of remembrances, of that which we have taken time to notice, of questions.

Solace. I remember something about solace from earlier this morning. David Whyte posted:

How can we possibly shape lives as beautiful as the people for whom we grieve?

I find the music menu and stop Bartók. I play instead Poulenc’s Novelette No. 3 and I do not think of writing.

A country for old men and women? We have only this one, peopled with our friends. We hold hands, weep, and ask our beautiful question in the fold of our community of family and friends. How can we possibly shape lives as beautiful as the ones for which we grieve?