Around me course Greek heroes

Spartan and Athenian, limber-limbed and fulsome

They war and think with God-like grace

While I fumble darkly through human woes

And when they come their brightness blinds

My numb eyes with their own disgrace.

I am a creature most loathsome 

Whose clinging hand binds

Tightly to the burning light

In the hopes that it shed its

Dancing glamour on my stunted life

Though its power steals my form.

But contorted in inefficacy

My pale, worm-soul twists at night

In longing, gasping, shuddering fits

That run razor-edged rife

As herald to the storm

Against perfection, my human fallacy.