The bell jar of innocence

Will, heaven forfend,

Create a world

Without end

Look! Look! Just around the bend.

Such faery stories he'd believed. 

Now in the cramped minds

Of these lean-faced men

With heavy stubble

Who shuffle down the road

Nothing happens.

No looks are exchanged.

Just mothers bending down to warn their children.

One old man falls down flat,

On his raggedy back,

While another man,

The whiskey priest, if you please,

Staggers into the park

To finish it now.

So look you boyo, look you through

This acrid smoke and the heavy dew,

And notice what time could

So easily do to you too:

Sans teeth, sans hair, sans everything. 

This man, the whiskey priest, clothes thin, thread bare,

Tears salty, stumbling there:

Flops onto a wet bench

Drifts

Into the past

The life

They said would last:

Weighs things up,

Brings all to mind,

His time to come, a waste of time

His time to breathe, a waste of breath

To float away now,  

Like a beautiful swan

He heard her voice calling

"Come! Come!

Be gone! Be gone!"