You know, friend,
the strangest occurrence came before me,
as I was walking under these auburn branches of birch just the other day.
I came across an old man
playing with marbles on a grassy verge, among the tumbling leaves.
So I asked of him,
'Surely there is a better terrain for such a game?'
to which he responded,
'The pleasure of completing the sensible endeavour,
was lost long ago.'
and so I but had to ask,
'Surely then pick a hobby that bears easier fruit?'
To which he said
'If a hobby lies on the praxis of habit, then any newfangled venture is necessarily improper.'
Quite perturbed, I could but reply;
'Is not the wholesale rejection of the erudition of change blinding?'
To which he smiled, and held up a marble
he'd found lost under a strewed leaf, to the light
it's smooth opal contours glistening in form,
and said,
'Babel, too, was built on a sphere.'
And so that was that.
But the days are getting shorter, aren't they?
Or rather, they're the same length, but the colours have faded round the edges
frayed dead leather
binding empty rusted old bones.
Isn't it funny? How something hollow and brittle is thought to be fragile,
while it's only after becoming hollow oneself
that one can drink from the cusp of influence and power.
Age is a wonderful thing; it lets one rationalise and contextualise all ones excesses,
that one felt so uncomfortable about
back when they were actually enjoyable.
But I am so tired of all the moralists;
where we thought we thought on what we ought to have fought,
instead we fought on what we ought to have thought.
Thats the thing about the absolutes,
be they Hegelian or Platonic,
is, if they're true to their namesake,
are scarcely a thing that needs defending.
Not that the opposite is any better;
To both the aged romantic
who sings praises to his mortality,
And the jejune one
the teenager drowning in lust and love,
I can but simply say;
'He who worships living flesh
has a fool for a god.'
for the illusion of form
has a conclusion forlorn.
But, ah no, don't go that way,
the traffic's terrible there..
Though, what way was it to where we live again?