'We are all old-timers'

After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning.
 Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.

We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.

 -- Robert Lowell, from "Walking in the Blue,'' inspired by Lowell's stay in McLean Hospital, the famous psychiatric institution in Belmont, Mass.