Let me die a youngman's death
 not a clean and inbetween
 the sheets holywater death
 not a famous-last-words
 peaceful out of breath death

 When I'm 73
 and in constant good tumour
 may I be mown down at dawn
 by a bright red sports car
 on my way home
 from an allnight party

 Or when I'm 91
 with silver hair
 and sitting in a barber's chair
 may rival gangsters
 with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
 and give me a short back and insides

 Or when I'm 104
 and banned from the Cavern
 may my mistress
 catching me in bed with her daughter
 and fearing for her son
 cut me up into little pieces
 and throw away every piece but one

 Let me die a youngman's death
 not a free from sin tiptoe in
 candle wax and waning death
 not a curtains drawn by angels borne
 'what a nice way to go' death

We’ve run a couple of McGough’s more humorous poems in the past, but we were long overdue for a serious one. And, despite the superficially light tone, this is indeed a serious poem, comparable in spirit if not in tone to Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle”.

Which is not to say it doesn’t have its absurdist side - this may be a serious poem, but it is not a solemn one, and the way the humour plays off against the darker tone is one of its particular strengths. (Who but McGough could have come up with the phrase ‘in constant good tumour’?) It’s a refreshing change from the “unconquerable soul” tone of most poems I’ve read on the topic - it is easy to picture the narrator as a living, breathing reprobate who fears a sanitised death far more than he fears death itself.

The poem also delivers a somewhat bitter commentary on the roles into which society slots the old - another topic which McGough’s gritty narrative voice makes a perfect medium to convey. (I suspect Bert Baxter, from the Adrian Mole books, would have loved it, for instance).

— Martin