Litany of Regrets

Once gaily painted
 And awash in joyful
 Rites and the blood
 Giving warmth to the slumbering crowds
 The wise man who is not wise
 Sits and broods
 And dreams of the hills of youth
 The glowing gold of wind-dancing wheat
 And the embracing shade of verdant oaks
 And he knows that the memory
 Is a falsehood
 Born of the batterings of the present
 Merely a chimera of what should have been
 A balm for the litany of regrets
 Left unerringly in his wake
 Like in any other
 And the anchorite dreams
 He dreams a shaman carving blood unto
 Darkened cavern ribs
 Whilse shadows dance
 To the ecstatic rythms
 Of the Pacan.
 He dreams of pages of gossamer and spider web
 Whose words will not survive their altercation back to dust
 And of words that moulder in
 Mustered ranks
 In endless volumes in endless mausoleums
 Whose foundations are the tide of the ocean
 He dreams of deep rivers of tears
 Of men as foolish as he
 Who would spread their days
 In the hopes of something more
 As anchorites numberless and alone
 Stare deep into the father sun
 Whose death is but a promise
 They cleanse their eyes
 Wash time from their sight
 With all else
 And so become immortal