Decay an Rebirth in Kinsellas Poetry

I think the themes of decay and rebirth are the main preoccupation of Kinsellas poetry. This is seen with his examination of the changing state of life, where he varies from examples as deep and meaningful as aging and death to are irrelevant as the breaking of an egg to show throughout his poetry how life can change situations.
Mirror in February focuses on Kinsella’s revelation that he is no longer young. It takes place on a day which ‘dawns with scene of must and rain’, and the poet Kinsella, who is in the middle of ‘Idling on some compulsive fantasy’ looks upon himself with ‘a dark exhausted eye’ and ‘a dry downturning mouth’. It is then that he realises he is no longer young and that it is ‘time to learn’ that he has grown old, rather than indulge in fantasy any longer. He realises that he is no longer young as he once believed, and that ‘I have looked my last on youth’. As the poem comes to an end the poet acts in a manner that he believes is appropriate to his state; not indulging in fantasy, but instead choosing to ‘fold my towel with what grace I can,/ Not young and now renewable, but man’. Thinking of Mr. D differs in example, but once more shows how life can change. The poem reveals how one’s vibrancy will inevitably fade at the time of death. Kinsella begins describing Mr. D as a lively individual. Kinsella tells us he is ‘still light of foot’ and while he is ‘ageing’ that he is still able to indulge in revelry, ‘his quiet tongue/ Danced to such cheerful slander… sipped and swallowed with a scathing smile’. However soon Mr. D’s liveliness is no more as he passes away, with Kinsella remarking that ‘When he died I saw him twice’. Now Mr. D is no longer full of life; instead the poet presents him as subject to the elements, presenting the recently deceased man looking out onto a river but subject to the ‘wharf-/Lamps’ which ‘plunged him in and out of light’. No longer is he the one who seeks to cause pain or suffering to others, as he once did with his