useless art

I am truly old because I am tired
and beset by my inescapable debt
to mistakes made through naive desire

and stubborn resolve. I have wept
silently, unable to plot the rhyme
required to purge this dim crypt

of its choked shadows, its whine
and bray, its treacherous historical depth.
This is a journey reduced to one thin line,

from spring to sand, from breath
to gasp, from fortunes foretold
to a harsh, derisive, forgotten myth
(from the flicker of an ignoble death)

gilded in whispers and fool’s gold,
a bastard tale born of an impotent sire
whose mute shame sings this bitter ode:

I am truly tired because I am old.