SONNET 101
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
~ W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming
So kindle most still which most we are left to give,
For here wee empathy's most impotent and sold
Must court of tired kings in parks shrivel and shrink
In assured dilapidation of man so cold.
Remind mere breath; existence too scholarly, for
Lucid more once we drip in kindness forms genius
Sweet -- by continence abandoned outwards -- like art,
Oft late, too often late to things important ruse
For hence, years write our trauma by erasing it,
Solemn presséd beneath this earth that wasn't mine,
The courage lived in dire circumstance static,
For lately acquaints temporal body, unkind
State-bound anxieties abandon country flings
Yet still abandoning, mine finds none there feeling.
- to precinct 0136B
