The Failing Light

I so often see the ageing man,
with his liver-spotted skin and knotted fingers shaking over the sink.
Wrinkles, like cuts on the skin, flare from the corners of his eyes as they shut tight against the steady ache that comes in the decades before the failing of the light.

Utterly frail,
with nothing ahead and everything behind.
What inky blots does he wish weren't there over his shoulder?
Of the things he can still remember, why do those stains persist?

The sands of time are buffeting him like exposed skin in a desert winds:
no strength left in him to hold his hands before him in defence.
All around him is as blinding as the sun but cold as the moon.

Analogous to nothing, the end is such an end:
Terrifying, and singular.

And yet we all face it, unable to turn away from the silent and colourless gaping maw.