AT THE END

At the end, when all is soon over

but for the long dusk

before the night falls,

I am drawn back

to those books that once,

decades and decades ago,

drew me on to foolish dreams

of a vague future of accomplishments

- a mirage of life worth living

that died a coward's death in retreat

to bastions of childhood, keeps

that couldn't have stood

what the world threw on their aged walls,

even if not betrayed from within

by the same blind fear;

embers in the twilight,

these printed memories,

set to to turn to ash.

It was not all in vain, no

- it was worse: The world

that cradled me, the loving

people that sheltered me,

gone in the flood waters

of my shattering mistakes,

drowned in endless silence

as I pathetically hid

in the memories of what I

degrared, betrayed

and destroyed.

27.09.2019