Music: "Aurora" - Ernesto Cortázar; Video by Marianela51

 

…As Time Goes By…

 

Our bodies grow old and our hair turns gray;
quickness in our steps is slowed and labored,
but our hearts are filled with joy each new day.
Are we now different? How have we been changed?

Each fine morning I say you have not aged;
we read news and drink tea at the café
I speak of this and that like a graybeard—
our bodies grown old and our hair turned gray.

Once we thought we were made of sterner clay—
rock hard stuff mined from a far mountain range,
then fired in a red hot forge every day—
now, our quickened steps are slowed and labored.

You, my brown beauty shaking your tabor,
singing love songs—such a tasty soufflé—
loving naively in a green arbor—
then our hearts were filled with joy each new day.

This morning, dinning in the cabaret,
you tell me life makes you feel stale and caged—
smoke surrounds you—I call you Lady Day…
Why are we different? Tell me how we changed?

You say, life is a sharp, deadly saber—
I say, time is like everyman’s valet…
a caring mover, a waiting neighbor
bearing an ancient, delicate bouquet
of bodies grown old…

 *About Rondeau Redoublé

The rondeau redoublé is a complex form written on two rhymes, but in five stanzas of four lines each and one of five lines. Each of the first four lines (stanza 1) get individually repeated in turn once by becoming successively the respective fourth lines of stanzas 2, 3, 4, & 5; and the first part of the first line is repeated as a short fifth line to conclude the sixth stanza. This can be represented as - A1,B1,A2,B2 - b,a,b,A1 - a,b,a,B1 - b,a,b,A2 - a,b,a,B2 - b,a,b,a,(A1).

In “As Time Goes By” John Daleiden has used incremental variation in the refrain lines, thus, marked A1 i, A2 i, B1 i, and B2 i; i indicates the use of incremental variation. The variations are indicators of the passage of time.

Rondeau (poetry) from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia