Erica Jong - Continental Divide lyrics

Handcuffed by time, I travel across this broad beautiful America- mesas, deserts, peaks with clouds caught upon them, the Continental Divide where a dropp of rain must decide whether to roll east or west like the rest of us. I speak to a group of avid, aging Californians about daring to embrace the second half of life. The pa**ions of the old are deeper than any wells the young can plumb. Meanwhile, you are dying in New York Hospital- your beautiful face drained of blood, your arms too heavy to seize the day, your shining eyes dimmed by pain & d** to dull it. You have boycotted food, yet all you can do is apologize to your grieving children for the trouble you cause by dying. 'Don't worry, I'm fine,' you say, eternal mother. Solitary as you will ever be, our love cannot save you from this last loneliness, this last sea voyage where no one dresses for dinner. Meanwhile I am listening to a doctor who claims we can all live to be a hundred, a hundred and twenty, If only we expand our arteries with exercise, our genitals with s**, our brains with crossword puzzles, poems & proverbs . . . Wingless, we can fly over d**h if only the body -that laggard- consents. I suppose the dropp of rain decided to roll west with the setting sun, taking you along. The Californian doctor is quoting Victor Hugo now: the eyes of the young show flame, the eyes of the old, light. More light, Doctor! How can we accept time's jagged jaws even as we are being eaten? How can we accept the extinguishing of eyes? Doctor- is d**h the aberration. or is life? And as for love- why is it never enough to save us?