What is the theme of the poem Home for the Aged?

Home For the Aged by Elizabeth Brewster:

The old men sit, five of them on a bench,
Half sleeping, half awake, dazed by the sun,
In the muted afternoon, between one broadcast ball game and the next
Their thoughts are leaves that drifted across a sky perpetually autumn.
Their hands are folded: they have done with the Sunday papers.

Decorously shabby, decently combed and clean,
They watch with half closed eyes the passers-by,
The loitering lovers, the boys on bikes , the cars
Rushing eagerly to some scene of active life .

Their lives are folded up like the papers, and who can know
Whether their years passed sober and discreet,
With the measured, dutiful, regular click of a clock,
Or whether some old violence lingers still
In faded headlines on their dusty brains?
What boyhood do they wander in, what middle age forget?
And do they watch their dwindling stock of time
With hope, or resignation, or despair?

3 answers

Read this very carefully and let us know what you think.

http://literarydevices.net/theme/
the theme is thoughts of elderly? This poem seems confusing.. it is either really easy and literal or metaphoric..
don't read this poem
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