Clods
The optimist said that fifty years is half your life,
but the audience surely knows
that men don't live much longer than
the heyday of their town's proud factory
or the life span of an empire in the modern age.
Fifty-five years down a blind path cluttered with bombshells,
every wrong foot a heaving blast,
brickbats, not lemons rain down on
my tiny comic parasol till
I am left here holding only bent and rusty bones.
This is the part where the optimist will spin a yarn
about weaving a tapestry
from the ragged bits remaining,
the breathless crowd expecting the hero
to run their happy gauntlet again and again,
till the last clod falls.
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