I've started doing volunteer work at a library, and just got home, so I have an excuse for being late:
Dirge
Today, watch them build
the charnel house of tomorrow,
brick by brick,
born in the artificially sterile womb
of those who say no to the future,
weaving a shroud to wrap the next day's morning in,
white with the salty tears
of the unborn railing in the night,
turned away from today
as those caught up in the dream of pleasure over principle
extinguish the torch of tomorrow's home
in the well of today's excess.
See the streets empty of young children -
who will be left to pass down the sight
Of Oddysseus sailing the wine dark seas of Homer,
lost in the dreamy past,
and the songs of Petrarch,
Shakespeare's sound and fury,
lost, like poor Ophelia
in a stream filled with broken hope?
Like the last survivor
who mourned over the treasures of his people no more,
buried under a hill to become dragon horde
when each and every one was forgotten,
and the last tattered copy
of Western Civ crumbles into dust,
and the promise, betrayed,
that Caesar and soldier,
engineer and lover,
poet and builder,
and sinner and saint
fought so hard to create,
who will be left to mourn its passing?
A++++ for you!
You're volunteering at a library? What a wonderful thing to do. And with all your knowledge, you are the person perfectly fit to help.
Jack.
Not me, I'm hoping to croak before that happens. Wow again, Miss Knitting!!