A cursed affliction of the heart

A human condition that drives us hither

And thither chasing a ghostly calling

On a restless search for mirages



We are all actors

Playing our role

Said a great sonnet writer

We use to quote platitudes



But what of those who wander

A crossroad of diverging futures

Where one role does not satisfy

Their boundless hopes and desires



A poet one moment

A grave digger the next

Who shovels mud in the darkness

And finds meaning in the light



A role fit for a novel maybe

Or at least a bad play

Starring unknown faces

Gesticulating to an empty theatre



Some find solace behind the pages

Of a tattered copy of  Crime and Punishment

Leading a vicarious life of alcoholics and whoremongers

And some become what they don’t read



Blessed is the mind whose devotion

Is pure, untainted by the spectre

Of what is and what could be

Charting a singleminded road that plods on



To heights heavenward

To places unexplored

In a narrow field of vision

Towards a sunlit horizon



And not be stuck in the bogs

Of indecisive action

Of halfhearted measures

In a dreary haze of possibilities



But it’s only a cosmic joke one would say

For why did the Almighty in his wisdom

Make a world so vast and beautiful

Our ambitions so conspicuously lofty

And our fleeting lives so very inadequate?