The Writing on the Wall

Lost ones, bleating wastrels,

The Fool rushing blindly over precipice or Man

Hanged by his own feet. Our infirmities

catcall us through the distant

years: a goad, the kiss of briars at our backs,

the callow lust for Palladia Mors to cull the chaff that grows

quick in wasted hours,

remonstrances flowering and withering with

lack of our resolve.

We share our scars with the divine

pride of old war veterans who made it through war

unwhole, regret branding the flesh most

assiduously with what was not done: the lips

unkissed, the smile unmet, the chance untaken.

One and all we were and are the palsied

hand that drops the singing

stones to dumb earth and translates the sounds to good

or ill result by divination, the crooked

mind that reads the entrails,

and in the process stills the spark of life inherent.