Old Pathways

 

I went one last time into Venice,

I rode there on mystical dreams,

By the deepest lagoon of my aging,

I was ripping my life at its seams.

 

It’s not now that things really matter,

What matter I’ll see this no more,

What matter one last crimson sunset,

What matter this hard bolted door.

 

I looked without envy or malice,

I held no despair to my heart,

But in that farewell and forgetting,

I was tearing my senses apart.

 

There’s a sense of decay and abandon,

There’s a sense of regret and remorse,

When you realise quite sober and sadly.

That you’re nearing the end of your course.

 

As a young man I held to her pleasures,

I enjoyed and endured her in kind,

She tugged at my soul with her rapture,

And with music she captured my mind.

 

I stood by a bridge in the moonlight,

My lovers hand clasped firm and fast,

As the depths of emotion swept over,

I was sounded by all of her past.

 

For I like my pleasures am fading,

I crumble like stucco in rain,

What once was a light is a shadow,

What once gave me joy brings me pain.

 

I was saddened but found her forgiving,

I was saddened but ripe to forgive,

I am old but she storms at my reason,

And she gives me her reasons to live.

 

While ever I have things to offer,

While ever the need is still strong,

While ever I still feel her rapture,

I know that I’ll echo her song.

 

For beyond the decaying of beauty,

Found deep in the heart of the rot,

Are things that are soulful and saintly,

That my hard troubled mind had forgot.

 

God grant me some sun and some shadow,

The comfort or knowing to know,

The sweetening smell in decaying,

And the pleasures in letting things go,