The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The **** of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The -isms and the -anities,
Magnificence and shame:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"

The Fates are subtle girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that heart and brain
Conceive, or great or small,
Upon this earthly ball.
Would you be knight and dame?
Or woo the sweet humanities?
Or illustrate a name?
O Vanity of Vanities!

We sound the sea for pearls,
Or drown them in a drain;
We flute it with the merles,
Or tug and sweat and strain;
We grovel, or we reign;
We saunter, or we brawl;
We search the stars for Fame,
Or sink her subterranities;
The legend's still the same:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"

Here at the wine one birls,
There some one clanks a chain.
The flag that this man furls
That man to float is fain.
Pleasure gives place to pain:
These in the kennel crawl,
While others take the wall.
She has a glorious aim,
He lives for the inanities.
What come of every claim?
O Vanity of Vanities!

Alike are clods and earls.
For sot, and seer, and swain,
For emperors and for churls,
For antidote and bane,
There is but one refrain:
But one for king and thrall,
For David and for Saul,
For fleet of foot and lame,
For pieties and profanities,
The picture and the frame:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"

Life is a smoke that curls--
Curls in a flickering skein,
That winds and whisks and whirls,
A figment thin and vain,
Into the vast Inane.
One end for hut and hall!
One end for cell and stall!
Burned in one common flame
Are wisdoms and insanities.
For this alone we came:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"

Envoy
Prince, pride must have a fall.
What is the worth of all
Your state's supreme urbanities?
Bad at the best's the game.
Well might the Sage exclaim:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"

The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The **** of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The--isms and the--anities,
Magnificence and shame:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'

The Fates are subtile girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that heart and brain
Conceive, or great or small,
Upon this earthly ball.
Would you be knight and dame?
Or woo the sweet humanities?
Or illustrate a name?
O Vanity of Vanities!

We sound the sea for pearls,
Or drown them in a drain;
We flute it with the merles,
Or tug and sweat and strain;
We grovel, or we reign;
We saunter, or we brawl;
We answer, or we call;
We search the stars for Fame,
Or sink her subterranities;
The legend's still the same:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'

Here at the wine one birls,
There some one clanks a chain.
The flag that this man furls
That man to float is fain.
Pleasure gives place to pain:
These in the kennel crawl,
While others take the wall.
She has a glorious aim,
He lives for the inanities.
What comes of every claim?
O Vanity of Vanities!

Alike are clods and earls.
For sot, and seer, and swain,
For emperors and for churls,
For antidote and bane,
There is but one refrain:
But one for king and thrall,
For David and for Saul,
For fleet of foot and lame,
For pieties and profanities,
The picture and the frame:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'

Life is a smoke that curls--
Curls in a flickering skein,
That winds and whisks and whirls
A figment thin and vain,
Into the vast Inane.
One end for hut and hall!
One end for cell and stall!
Burned in one common flame
Are wisdoms and insanities.
For this alone we came:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'

Envoy

Prince, pride must have a fall.
What is the worth of all
Your state's supreme urbanities?
Bad at the best's the game.
Well might the Sage exclaim:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'

The words are gone, the parties cracked glowsticks spilling their blood on the sidewalk.
The minutes that felt all mine, personal, a glove around space-time that I dictated -

now they’re standardized to measure the effects of real disparities in theoretical constructs.

But my fingers twitch, my teeth find skin, the coffee keeps coming but the world doesn’t slow.
And someday I’ll LOSE IT and bike naked through my new streets and claim it all back, the dark spangled world I used to inhabit, that evaporated in the false lights of the city.

Give me back the yellowed bricks and the pensive dizzy walks home. Running through the forest with the vultures up ahead and the cracked pavement underfoot, woods rising like spectres, autumn crackling on all sides, loneliness lifting up my steps and fog curling around my neck. The songs all say the cities are exciting but the outskirts are alive, the outer places plead, they love you with a desperation those glutted urbanities won’t understand.

They’ll call us home someday. That dark earth, the gnarled tree. Empty fields and brick-husk-buildings will welcome us with fireflies and curving mist and the quiet dramatics lost to the souls beating their spreadsheet hearts, with space budgeted x for family and y for ******* and the bullet-to-the-heart z (complacence). They’ll call us home, remind us the world is made of ghosts, the bones of trees, the bodies of clay, and the dust of flowers. That bluebird chirping is the only true sound you’ll ever hear. The pine needles and the wind are saying something important, and I live in a world of windowpanes! The fog is lifting, the sun is rising, and all the ghosts are going home. The waterfalls keep falling, but they fade from memory. The rocks jut towards the heavens, just as always, but my appreciation fades. Now I’m left -

The plenipotentiary Three Sisters
Urbanities upwelling fate
Never ending, still beginning
Never done but ever ongoing
Like the Web of Penelope;
Succouring the leftmost invulnerable
Vanguardist, Seirizzim, hermeneutically
Succinct sowing the longitudinal
Herald wind of talaria auguring
Newly the rogatory long finger
Of cephalomancy reaping
Harmatiology's whirlwind-
Word for word and letter for letter.



ELEETE J MUIR