The stratagems of Time 

swallow the parables

needed to survive, 

so the liminal moments

carrying all the portent,

require learning anew, 

a lion's share 

of both truth and dare

to deploy when caught

between Scylla and Charybdis, 

and sanity seems but 

a stowaway on the ship

of madness; when

ignorance really could

have been bliss, but

to choose it wilfully

would solely foreshadow

that aftertaste of sin.