WALKING ON THE EDGE - APRIL 1958

My humble life on taut rope tread,
Ambivalent of heaven – apprehensive of hell
From birth to road of perverse path
Thence death and only death tells.

Only the end unfolds the truth
Of other worlds – an endless search,
Too late for things undone and done.
Too late for penitence, death perches.

With bland and pallid countenance,
Emotionless and lifeless
As empty roaches shell in autumn,
You know but feign vacuousness.

“Speak! Speak you famished hulk of bones;
Speak of glories of paradise!
Speak naught of hell your eyes have seen
You esoteric fiend is so wise”.

“What do you say of piety unmeeded,
Virtue, a vain creed unrecompensed?
What do you say of retributions
For heedless God’s ordinance?”

Incompetent to utter words
You have stealthily taken flight;
Vacating your silent temple,
Mortals seek not your odious plight.

Microbes feasted on your beatless heart;
Clinging flesh smoldered to dust;
Soon skull void as empty sea shell
The, silent roar of eternal lust.

More wine, more wine and to the path,
For brief, very brief candle tears pour.
Ephemera is the waning flame;
Death is dead and nothing more.

Tenure on earth is but a transition
Into nothingness. Days are dearth!
Bewoe naught of darkness nor light;
Life is but a ludicrous mirth!