DEVOTION

for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dim forms hover near a shadowed path
Reach in with bent fingers to crook my delusions;
Do I have to hold on to them yet again?
Do I really need this?

Go ahead and infest me, i'm accustomed to it.
As your tyranny unwinds from the mist
Within my breast agelessness endures
Fanned by your factorys' scorching fires.

Loving shadows flit from darker forest
And wash into bleached memories of
Love's first shattered against friendships forged
Half dissolves in memory as the first plundered lust

Resurrects grief whose echoes track the past
Over life's eclipsed hedge maze
Now barren revealing intimates from the dawn
Torn from me by destiny.

They don't hear my later melodies,
Those to whom I used to sing.
That crowd dissolved long ago
Eulogized into silence.

My song resounds among strangers now,
And their praises make me wince
For those who used to listen with held breath
Now wander far apart if not in death.

My spirit feels an alien desire
Pine toward the peace of that grave
With inconstant pulse my bloodline ebbs
As when Pathetique or Requiem unrolls

And flow my tears the heartbeat said
I smother my pain with an iron will
I see my world as if from a distance
And the dreams I lost are all that's real.