We’d Be Different

World of Messes, world of Botch.
Modern war was on their watch.
Too many cocktails, too much Scotch.
            We’d be different.

A corny joke, an old wives’ tale.
Off to work—lunch in a pail.
Sawing a board, driving a nail.
            We’d be different.

No smooth edges, no Degrees.
Easy to anger, hard to appease.
No taste for strangers, no mercy for trees.
            We’d be different.

Then actors We, much like a film set.
Schools of words writhed in a fishnet.
We told each other, each time that we met
            We’d be different.

Next flew some years, everyone stoned.
We laughed together as if we were cloned,
And yet, at times, still we intoned
            We’d be different

Last came the money, worshipped instead.
Getting and Getting was getting ahead.
Forgotten now was the time when we said
            We’d be different.

New ones rise, each with a screen.
Youth has ever that silver gleam.
Perhaps somehow unforeseen
            They’ll be different.

History loops to a steely bight.
Hobbes points out Appetite.
Perhaps by fortune, even if slight,
            They’ll be different.

Malthus’ smirk, Darwin’s glance.
Mark Twain tossing an old man’s lance.
Not their fault. Not much chance
            They’ll be different.



*

Roads

        Why go the west road now?
The youth who raced the sea-storm’s ire,
‘Mid heaving trees and hissing wire,
        Has lost his name somehow.
        Why go the west road now?

        Why go the south road now?
Those ivied walls—like climbing light ! —
Yet we who swore to van the fight
        Dimmed our luminous vow.
        Why go the south road now?

        Why go the north road now?
The rush, as if no time to spare,
To mountains fixed in snowy air,
        Old knees will not allow.
        Why go the north road now?

        Why go the east road now?
Her love of me so time-away—
In a desert land, and safe to say,
        Faded anyhow…
        Why go the east road now?

        Why go any road at all?
Winter comes in dragging chain,
Frosted breath, and soon the rain
        Turns to snowfall.
        Why go any road at all?



Cf. T.H.