How quickly I have aged,
My frolic over, gone ere I knew
Separated from my vast pursuits
I am left with the mundane.

Still vivid are the great pageants
The well-earned victories
The solemn losses, the valiant tries
The striving for worthy cause.

The enthusiasm for our devotion
The artistry in our performance.

How numb we were to pain and critics
How bored with swaggering airs
How tedious were daunted men
Afraid to try lest they lose
Reduced to sound and fury
Bound to convention and myth
While we rose on dragon wings
Beyond the blare and fracas
To brush against our dreams.

And now for all its history, all its giddy triumph
For all the inconsolable defeat,
All the tragedy and comedy
For the sun-drenched peaks
And the shadowed chasms
For all the smallness I sought to avoid
My spirit has emigrated
I have grown old.

Not chronologically withered but worse-
Void of inspiration
I am a nibbler at great feasts
A weary traveller, a faint-hearted knight
Whose rusting armour and wounded movement
Hint at kettle drums and rousing battles
Made the more pitiful by what could be.

Copyright © 2005 Paul Heno