Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

 

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

Roger McGough

 

Let me die a youngman's death

not a clean and inbetween

the sheets holywater death

not a famous-last-words

peaceful out of breath death

When I'm 73

and in constant good tumour

may I be mown down at dawn

by a bright red sports car

on my way home

from an allnight party

Or when I'm 91

with silver hair

and sitting in a barber's chair

may rival gangsters

with hamfisted tommyguns burst in

and give me a short back and insides

Or when I'm 104

and banned from the Cavern

may my mistress

catching me in bed with her daughter

and fearing for her son

cut me up into little pieces

and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman's death

not a free from sin tiptoe in

candle wax and waning death

not a curtains drawn by angels borne

'what a nice way to go' death

Written in the form of a mantra, a simple and effortlessly jolly encomium to the art of going out with a bang , 'Let Me Die a Youngman's Death', gives notice of something fresh and gloriously unworkable, something unequivocally, hedonistically unstoppable, which was bound to appeal to the swathes of students who turned up in droves to hear him speak."

The poem is both of its time and, striking, as it does, a wilfully arch pose which communicates its rebellious energy, time transcending. And it discloses a context, a knowledge of earlier poetry, which throws a spanner at pre-conceptions. It conveys the attitude of defiance, if not the form, which so ignites Dylan Thomas' seminal 'Do not go gentle into that good night', and it locates an ideal vehicle for the expression of movement and fluidity in the kinds of compound term used so brilliantly by that much earlier purveyor of the protean, organic power of words, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

https://yorkshiretimes.co.uk/article/Poem-Of-The-Week--Let-Me-Die-A-Youngmans-Death-By-Roger-McGough