If I in my unnumbered
years should fail
To register or
comprehend the breath
Of age that blows
in gusts upon my back,
Then keep from
me the secrets that remain
In death until
such time as I recall
This moment that
in ignorance I asked
That I might
see the place where only moons
May walk their
measured tread about the sky
That, tilting,
forms an aisle around a sun
Whose endless
oscillations dictate time.
Whose endless
oscillations dictate time
To those who
must obey Apollo’s slave;
While we that
die below this falling night
Swollen with
the weight of growing years,
Await the template
our design must twin.
And yet, instinctive,
still I know my cause,
Some slighted
sense of destiny remains;
Shallow depths
of a distance not remarked
Since naked swam
the sun within its womb
And I was nothing
more than idle thought.
And I was nothing
more than idle thought
Between the observations
of the eye
Above the earth
than synchronises life.
This, they alone
who knew the secrets know,
Yet will not
under weight of words confess,
The steady progress
of the current clime
Deftly hides
the primitive nerve of steel
Which I in my
heroic light shall wield
To counter-balance
that which would prevail
If I in my unnumbered
years should fail.
