Unlike Thee Athenian

Those rarer men I once fondly knew... Many dead now... What remains of them they are so Few. Am I to die when numbered Amongst the last? Old and bent, pale and withered; Thin fingers grasped Like a hawks talons upon the Smooth knob of a lacquered stick; My few remaining hairs, as grey As Novembers morn, oiled and Combed sideways over...well... Whatever small amount will be left Of it! Surely that cannot be What advancing age holds for one Such as me? Then a portly figure stuffed like A drawn-up sack; Crouched forward and painfully Shuffling; stooped, like encumbered Atlas, with the weight of woeful Lamentations heaped across my Crooked back. Never! For, and knowing no man, with Any amount of certainty, may choose His end, On my steadfast will would'st rather To depend:- When refusing advancements Proffered from the Grim Reapers Gnawing malaise and begotten ills; Also, with all caution, avoiding That deceitful Twilight that so Beguilingly spills... Over lengthening shadows at close Of day; Thusly recalling there was, long Ago, an Athenian, who, to his Deficit, in a greatly foolish and Disastrous way, Practised un-natural munificence; His bane, Apemantus, the cynic, Whilst loudly admonishing his Charity, cruelly heaping upon him In all manner of rebuking offence! And, notwithstanding hesitant Modesty, let it hereby be duly Mentioned that I too, undoubtedly, Can somewhat compare against a Not inconsiderable measure of Intelligence and wit; In the mind's eye to construct Momentary abstractions, that, Loosely interconnected, the swift Instance might briefly fit; For do we not all strive to Produce the same? To induce the many shades of an Evasive nuance into the fleeting Semblance of an illuminated frame? Once a distinguished man wrote :- That whomsoever Toiled industriously at a couple of Lines...was to work harder than all Those involved with much Laboured effort and hard physical Endeavour. Resolved, therefore, in this Moment of fortitude, ex post facto, A part of myself to newly Re-invent... Before the lessening years are Solely wasted upon the countless Alters of good intent. It is done! Let this then be my Stated pledge: that I shall call On all dead poets for their Creative rage - To help fashion rhyming ink onto A blank and crisp white page! Although I have neither Lofty Blake's Hammered anvil nor the fantastic Clay of common Yeats; No matter - I have enough! Unto their evasive Muse I Therefore propose, before my fuel Runs dry, To aspire to reinvigorate...as if An ailing comet whose roaring Clamour, ferociously reignited, Burning a trail through the frozen Fields of an ice filled sky! And, long hence the pen drops From this aged and palsied hand, Under the blazing winds of those Sapphire fields - raising high my Standard! A tattered rag, amidst A salient, in the heart of this Desolated and near abandoned Wasteland. Until, shattered, like countless Shards of a broken comet, That discarded verse Lies with my mouldering bones... Wrapped in the comforting Blanket of the tight brown earth.