The Lamplighter's Hamartia

 

I stand before you a broken man without hope or cause,

Bereft as the last forest tree left stranded when its final leaf

Turned brown in decay, its moths wrapped in infants' gauze,

Returning to the chrysalis if only to express their grief.

It's true I am a lighter of lamps that cast beams on shadows;

A dangerous task when called to discipline ignoble viragos.

And yet I am a flawed and compromised human being in heart,

Rolling unknowing through battered doorways that show the path

Towards the solitary confinement of thoughts that grow and depart

With black flapping wings and piercing yellow eyes sharp with wrath.

I would rather a raven tend the needs of that final tree, skeletal

Though it be, if only to forgive my worn-out humanity, irrational.

 

Haunted like Achilles, I made peace with my wrenching hamartia,

Refusing the knowing smiles of bystanders more haunted than me.