My neighbors’ child Cash, now sixteen months old—
Life measured in months! While my years, decades,
Eras rush. I know for whom the bell tolls:
For this time-hollowed wreck—drained, degraded.
The sun, lifting night’s curtain, lights the stage
Whereon Cash, enthralled, perceives mystery
While fierce cognition, stokes, flames his nascent
Mind, creating there thrill-filled history.
My play is closing; the trite, worn-out tunes,
The cold, heaped ashes of my life, endorse
That blunt, ancient view: there is nothing new
Under the sun! That grist mill, Time, grinds coarse.
While my days, dark, menace with dry thunder,
Gleeful Cash greets his with wide-eyed wonder.
(9/8/09)