Fading Pictures

There were houses on stilts, sampans floating quietly,
I couldn't see them as well as I used to all so nicely,
maybe that's all symptomatic, magic, perception I had,
beauty always because pathos doesn't just mean sad.

Today my wife said that I looked just like a young boy,
beige shorts, skinny legs, in bright yellow sunlight joy;
then in pictures of the past, holding an elephant's tusk,
foreign climes, it's me on the farm in the fading dusk.

What's your 'fade,' do you have something in the sun?
you have to dig deep because the old time has gone;
my son has a picture standing at a gold mine cockily,
quite funny really, the arrogance, he looks just like me.

We will return, all those events from your lovely past,
God told the doubters, our eternal spirit will always last.