I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away

Host: The sea was breathing again. Each wave crashed with slow, deliberate melancholy against the rocks, like a memory that refused to die. The sky above the harbor was an enormous canvas of gray and silver, the kind of light that doesn’t shine but lingers, like the echo of something once bright. A seagull cried in the distance, and its voice seemed to vanish into the wind, leaving only the sound of water.

Host: Jack stood at the edge of the old pier, his hands buried deep in his coat pockets, eyes fixed on the horizon. The tide rose and fell, pulling, releasing, pulling again—like a slow, indifferent heartbeat.

Host: Behind him, Jeeny walked quietly, her boots soft against the damp wood. She stopped beside him, the wind catching strands of her black hair, sending them across her face like brushstrokes of a forgotten painting. Between them lay the weight of Yeats’s words, heavy and fragile: “All that’s beautiful drifts away, like the waters.”

Jeeny: “It’s strange,” she said, her voice barely louder than the sea, “how true it feels the older you get. Everything—people, dreams, even the light—seems to move away from you. Slowly at first. Then all at once.”

Jack: “That’s because beauty’s not meant to stay,” he answered, his voice low, gravelly. “It’s built to fade. Like the tide. That’s what gives it meaning. If it didn’t leave, we’d never notice it was here.”

Host: The wind lifted, tugging at their clothes, whistling through the pier posts. The smell of salt and decay hung thick in the air—the kind of scent that reminds you how alive endings can be.

Jeeny: “You make it sound noble,” she murmured, eyes on the water. “But it’s not always beautiful when things drift away, Jack. Sometimes it’s cruel. Sometimes it’s just… empty.”

Jack: “That’s because we try to hold what’s meant to move,” he replied, his gaze still on the horizon. “We cling to people, to moments, to things. But beauty isn’t a possession—it’s an event. It happens, and then it’s gone.”

Host: The waves struck harder now, spraying their faces with fine mist. Jeeny closed her eyes, letting it touch her skin, as if to prove she could still feel something.

Jeeny: “But what’s the point of beauty if it only reminds us of loss?” she asked, her voice trembling between wonder and grief. “Why does everything that stirs our hearts have to disappear? Why build anything at all, if all that’s beautiful drifts away?”

Jack: “Because,” he said, turning to face her now, his grey eyes fierce and tired, “beauty isn’t about staying—it’s about changing you before it leaves. You don’t mourn the flower because it fades; you remember that it made you look at the world differently while it bloomed.”

Host: The wind shifted, carrying the distant sound of a church bell, muffled by the sea air. Seagulls circled overhead, their cries lost in the roar of the tide.

Jeeny: “But memory doesn’t hold warmth, Jack. Not forever. You can remember a face, a voice, a moment—but not how it felt. That’s the real loss. Beauty drifts away, and so does the feeling that made it matter.”

Jack: “Maybe,” he said, pausing, “but maybe that’s what keeps us alive—the chase. We keep creating, loving, searching, because we know it won’t last. If everything stayed perfect, the heart would stop moving. It’d drown in its own comfort.”

Host: A faint sunlight broke through the clouds, striking the water in shards of silver. For a moment, it looked like the sea was breathing light. Jeeny watched, her eyes wide, tears she didn’t know she had shimmering against her lashes.

Jeeny: “You think that’s worth the pain? All this beauty just to feel it fade?”

Jack: “I think pain is the proof we saw beauty at all,” he answered, quietly now. “You can’t grieve what never touched you.”

Host: The air between them tightened, like a thread stretched too thin. Then Jeeny laughed softly, a broken, tender sound.

Jeeny: “You always make tragedy sound reasonable.”

Jack: “And you always make loss sound holy.”

Host: The waves crashed, louder, fiercer, as if to argue with them both. The sky darkened again, the sunlight gone as quickly as it had come.

Jeeny: “When Yeats wrote that,” she whispered, “he must’ve been mourning something—someone. Maybe he wasn’t just talking about beauty fading, but about time itself. About how the soul has to watch its own joy drift away.”

Jack: “Maybe,” he said, shrugging, “or maybe he was just being honest. Maybe he saw what we all see sooner or later—that everything we love is water. No matter how tightly you hold it, it finds its way through your fingers.”

Host: The wind calmed, suddenly. The sea softened to a rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat finally at rest. For a moment, the world seemed to breathe with them.

Jeeny: “So what do we do then?” she asked, softly. “Just watch it all drift away?”

Jack: “No,” he said, turning toward her. “We walk with it. We learn to move the way the water moves—never stopping, never clinging, but always reflecting what passes through us.”

Host: The sun broke through again, this time more fully, spilling gold across the waves, the pier, their faces. The light was gentle, but it cut through the mist like a promise.

Jeeny: “You think we can really do that?” she asked, her voice trembling like a child’s. “Live without holding?”

Jack: “We already do,” he replied, a faint smile touching his lips. “We just haven’t realized it yet.”

Host: A long silence followed. The sea kept moving, endless and ancient. The beauty of it was in its impermanence—in the way it never tried to be still. Jeeny looked at Jack, her eyes reflecting both the sea and something deeper—acceptance, perhaps, or surrender.

Jeeny: “Then maybe beauty doesn’t drift away after all,” she said, finally. “Maybe it just changes form—like the water. It never disappears. It just becomes part of something else.”

Jack: “Exactly,” he said, his voice barely a whisper now. “Maybe the old men Yeats heard were wrong. Maybe all that’s beautiful doesn’t drift away—it returns, in different shapes. In the tide, in a face, in a memory that refuses to die.”

Host: The waves rolled on, calm, eternal, as if agreeing. The light softened, the horizon blurring into the sky until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Host: And as they stood there—two small figures on an endless shore, bound by loss, love, and the quiet truth of impermanence—it felt as though the world itself had paused to listen to the sea’s reply: that beauty, like water, never truly leaves. It only flows into another form.