Volume I Version I   ☼   Today is 

New York Reflections By Fr. Jun Villanueva

OLD FRIENDS by PAUL SIMON
(Sung by Simon & Garfunkel)

"Old friends Old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends.

Old friends
Winter companions the old men
Lost in their overcoats waiting for the sun
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders of the old friends.

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy years.
Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears;

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
a time of innocence
a time of confidences
long ago it must be
I have the photograph
Preserve your memories
their all that's left you."

I just kept listening to this wonderful song
And my memory lingers from childhood to priesthood
Bereft of any sentimentality
But of reality
That sooner or later
We will look for our own park benches
And sit in our Roman collars
Maybe too old to remember
Our ordination days

someday,
I will make an MTV of this song
Our friendship, our dreams, our fears...
Old friends...!





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