Author Information
Aubade
Sometimes, I hate weekends,
their sprawling lurching forwards
and indefinite, unaltered, thrusting
ways: sometimes, I awake,
unfettered, a darkened motive
forced past the night from which it
springs, burning ineffectually
in a morning's embers.
We work as we wake, and sleep
in dreams our conscience fails to make.
But shall our weekend warriors
never toil, never bow
their fire-crowned heads,
enwreathed in furtive future destinies
and stolen in their prime
by facts, predispositions, fears?
What weekends will our conscience
take, destroy, unmake, when fires
and oft-burnt flames
are dead, burnt-out in desolation?
What weekend in this blasted
world remains?
We'll live our lives in peace, unconflicted,
a weighed and oft-considered future lone, inflicted.
But O, the contest! The pitting
of our pittance 'gainst another's,
the striving in seeming innocence
of truth, all-knowing, all
uncaring: where, in this thoughtful,
all-determined world, inscribed
in thought, described as such,
can such feeling find itself?
Ensorcelled? Such misgiving misses,
confounds its truth with another -
what world worth living in has no share
of magic, darker truths, despotic
drives and manifold directions?
What world, untomed, completely
clear, directed, can burn so bright
as to keep its flame enticing, to keep
out melancholy undirection, loss
of all that deepens in our hearts?
This life for me, no other where
the canniest can swirl its crystal ball.
