Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather – Robert Frost
Back out? How far? To what remove?
What will that further distance prove –
that some great reset of the clock
will change the past, and thereby block
the entropy and slow decay
that brought us to the present day,
where we bewail our world’s demise?
How could that fate be a surprise?
The detail wasn’t burnt or lost
without our knowledge; we helped toss
those leaves onto the burning pile,
convincing ourselves all the while
that an ideal of greater good
was possible, if we just could
change everyone else without first
changing ourselves. That bubble burst,
and now we cry alack and woe.
We knew then how this thing would go:
that words like fate and destiny
sound empty, but our vanity
insists we cannot be to blame,
and seeks an Other we can name
as the great cause of the dismay
we see as the threat of the day.
Those better days of halcyon,
in truth, ’tis better that they’re gone;
Just ask the disenfranchised then
how golden was that age of men,
how green their grass, how free their reign,
in that time we think free from pain?
If you would enshrine some day gone
as when the world was good, dream on!
Back out? ’Tis but a wistful dream!
Instead: become, instead of seem,
a human soul that wants to grow
beyond the boundaries you know.
24 MAR 2017
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