What of exactly is a friendship lost?
Over minute trifles so easily tossed?
Or one that disbands in the cataract of Time?
Something worth pain and blood? Which is absolute and wonderful?
And so, too, can it be asked,
To which man is authority given,
Of such astute austerity endowed,
The man to pass such judgment in good faith and conscience,
Is none other than the crowd.
But, irrelevancies, I totter!
The worst is to be discussed,
For far beyond the scope of reason,
Have these travesties been concussed.
For here, I give to you the corpse of this bond,
This once turgid child of innocence
So, perhaps, its unadulterated substance may quickly manifest
Yet, I pray, I hope, I wonder, its marred and tattered mien profess
The noxious tonic it did consume,
Of ancient spleen and venomous ardor,
To rend its former pulchritude, to hands of untouched fury placed,
It suffered the most insufferable fate to befall upon any beast:
To reanimate, to thrive, to live once more,
In the hands of a tyrant and aimlessly exist
Necrotic at its very core.
This beast, this creature of hated stock,
Was my burden, my cross, to bear,
One, I weep to recollect, of part and parcel of my own flock.
But, I did this, I bore this, along with many others,
In spite of righted timbers,
In spite of rationale,
In spite of my fiber and moral code, that kept us forcibly constrained
For the sake of you, authority
For the sake of tranquil minds
I stood obstinate at the lineaments, between those contrasting foes,
In the self-imposed, childish Purgatory,
Completely indisposed.
Between the shining, gleaming face of holiness, and precipice of spite
For manner of serenity and cowardice perpetual,
Confronted this creature, I did not,
For the sake of you, dear authority, for the sake of stable place.
Children we were, yes, but no less severe the gravity,
For the winnowing of unity, at the yoke of caprice, is to blame.
A real friendship will endure, endure through the boreal,
Endure through the malice, the vitriol,
Will breathe new and longing appetite for breadth, for universality,
Of which all parts must maintain accountability.
It must stand resolute no matter how formidable the ballast,
It must be calm, objective, and outlast the harrowing feelings change may accompany,
Will sacrifice and encourage wellbeing,
It must imbue recollection, a past so beautiful,
Be a comfort in the presence of shame and humility,
Its essence, a friend itself.
But I can no longer pay, at the cost of sanity,
I can no longer give what little remnant humanity to forge another bond,
One made of dead and long-forgotten parts,
I can not, I will not,
I am sick, I am weary for all of the injustices I have done
To watch as the seed of hatred continues to bloom,
The veil of falsehood walk without shame,
To see her stride of perverting intent, tainting the world with touch,
Is a miserable folly to me,
A crime which I let permit,
A coward I was to not stop this, to not lay this matter to rest,
No,
My beleaguered hands put this evil in the ground, and left it to the tides of fate,
It grew, beyond my capture, beyond my strength to control,
Into this horrid ****, this miserable plant,
Which, still!, it grows sans disannul
To take responsibility to this, on me, I cannot err
But, naturally, none to the plant, it seems,
And this is only fair.