Gerontion

     Thou hast nor youth nor age

But as it were an after dinner sleep

Dreaming of both.

HERE I am, an old man in a dry month,

Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

I was neither at the hot gates

Nor fought in the warm rain

Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,

Bitten by flies, fought.

My house is a decayed house,

And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,

Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,

Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.

The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;

Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.

The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,

Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.

                    I an old man,

A dull head among windy spaces.

T.S. Eliott

Veteran Drugog svetskog rata, Rail Bahadur Gurung, 83, sedi ispred svoje kuće u planinskom selu Dhampus, marta 2007. na Nepalu. Ovo selo je dom mnogim članovima etničke većine Gurung, iz čijih redova se biraju vojnici za jedinice Gurkha. Nakon 200 godina, Gurkhe su najzad dobile jednaka prava na penziju koja ima ostatak britanske Vojske, nakon što su 13 puta odlikovani Viktorijinim krstom i hvaljeni za hrabrost i lojalnost u službi Britanskoj Kruni.