Bum's Portrait

He sits with his head upon his hands His eyes are red And water that glued the sands Sun sucked, slithered from the sandy bed His thoughts are the hourglass Grains of meaning mincing away His castle was the sheltered pass Tomorrow in today decay. The officer who came to the door Polite as an exterior of class Knocked his ego to the floor Set his emotions to tinder like grass Dry as the cinders of his life: It was she who picked up the knife She who wanted out as wife So many things unspoken, so much rife And he cannot own that argument again He lost in the public sphere While he was at the war enduring pain Treason was a shift of change here. The officer asked him if he had somewhere To go ... leaving the house his hands built He wandered through the cold night air Racked by conscience alternating guilt. Then here ... to sit and muse alone Rejecting interventions of the court To share what was his own He relinguished property and support Except from the sweet distil of fruit And wanders between the staggering eye Victim of an altered truth Forgotten mortal under infallible sky.