‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.
The hopes I cherished are in the past,
The dreams all come undone,
I look ahead to the future and
I know, there isn’t one.’

He sat alone on the patio
And stared on out to the bay,
‘There was a time,’ he began again,
Then stopped in his dismay,
For whitecaps out in the ocean still
Were rolling in to the shore,
Just like they had on another day,
Just like they’d done before.

And pictures came to his aging eye
Of the world, how it had been,
When life and love were a world away
When he was just sixteen,
But times and tides had rolled over him
In a restless, reckless ride,
Had torn the very heart out of him
To leave empty space inside.

‘There must be a time,’ he thought aloud
‘When it’s right to call it quits,
When you’ve done the things that you wanted to
And it’s fallen all to bits,
With friends and lovers gone on their way
And with not a glance aside,
While I, stiff-necked, being so correct,
Am caught in the sin of pride.’

And then, the thought of his darling wife
Had finally raised a tear,
The sense he’d not even noticed her
For the time that she was here,
‘We never know what we’ve got,’ he thought,
‘Til it’s well and truly lost,
Just one more line in the ledger that
Adds up to the final cost.’

Then the children, what of the children with
That look of innocent trust,
Who burrowed into that heart you had
When you thought that God was just,
But once they’re grown and you find they’ve flown
To their lives, to stand or fall,
You wait for them to return to you
But you find they never call.

‘I think I’ve come to the end of things,’
He said, without a tear,
‘But I don’t mind, for I cannot find
A reason to be here.’
The only sound was the breaking waves
With the salt-spray and its sting,
He looked about like a man who craves,
But none were listening!

David Lewis Paget