A Song for the Fragile

 

I met a man who drank the stars before a dancing Irish hearth,

declaring that a hundred billion people,

more or less, must have lived and died upon this earth;

 

and no matter how high a church's steeple

or the fervour of its faithful far below,

their lives are eventually, universally and unfortunately lethal.

 

Warming to the craic he mused: “It must follow

that the only course of action worth a jot

is to play the solitary dreamer, be a Rousseau.

 

“In this way, he winked mysteriously, “we allot

our time not as imposed by ticking clocks,

but simply in our reveries, in dreams that time forgot.

 

“For liberation is the spur that urges, with bleeding hocks,

the wild, wild horses, timid or fragile though they be,

across the widest fen, towards the grace that only play unlocks.

 

“No fighting's assured, no Waterloo ensues; let your fear not be the key

that opens wide the maws of lions. Mere children at the end of days,

each must make their ways and means, under the fruit of the poison tree.”

 

Chris Hubbard

2018