Regrets

When I was young, maybe fifteen or so

I heard the Diviner say to us, the children:

Give away every gold and diamond

Including your love for fun and red lipsticks;

Keep yourself fancy free to gain knowledge

But I was young and only fifteen or so

Too young to care and too young to remember.

Too young to care and too young to remember.

I was very young, fifteen or so and who cares

I heard the diviner say this to us often, so near me

But we heard him through one ear and out the other.

We skipped the farm and enjoyed life till we paid lovely;

We paid with sighs and sold life to endless lament.

I am ten-and-twenty, too old to learn new tricks.

Truth only comes to the goat in hawsers and when there’s

Chaos in the crowd, when the sleeve is taller than the head.

A painting goes waste when futility chokes the image; but

I was too young to care and now nature has given up on me.

Even the roses are distant and aloof as if awake to my fate.

I, who sought beauty and found it at where it never belonged,

Now, every foliage crackles with a soothing morbidity beneath me.