But the immaculate future must wait

There is nothing left within us, they say,

And our time well spent is a delusion

No longer is this a world to cherish,

No more must we believe in stories once told—

In promises kept, in pursuit of truth

Wealth, glory, happiness, faith, peace or love

Of this fool’s gold nothing is spoken now

Save bitter pangs for their undiminished

Allure, a final fiction upon which

The dull and practical practice their strokes:

“Life is nothing, save that which we see and

Scrounge. There is no room for truly living.”

There is no eulogy to give for dreams

Silently, we pack each into black edged

Coffins, and shepherd them out onto fields

Of reality, the potter’s ground of

Our logic, a land of desolates and

Never-cans; the cruel monoliths of jade

And vitriol. Such joyous funeral—

“We are rid of our illusions at last!  

No more fantasy, no more of the cowl 

Of ignorance pulled centuries over

The world! We are free now, forever free!” 

Yet as we gift our kind elders to Death,

To the dustbin of our recollections,

To the pit of unrealism and bunk,

To wishful thinking and foolish proverbs,

I must wonder: when will a knell ever

Sound for the monotone miserablists?

Must we mourn lords of death and decay if

Ever they succumb to their own fetid

Embrace? I do not know, and of the new

Thing before us I am doubly in doubt,

A world without a heartbeat, or a soul