State

Every mistake was little, and how blind was I to them all.
Like blunders were always there but never before me – with me –
as they are now. Never too hard, never blink.

Or it will go away. Mustn’t scare it away; mustn’t make it
something it isn’t; mustn’t force anything.
Let what will happen, happen. Because it will, one form or another,
try or not.

Lest it be, lest it be, for it be. Inferno is black. Inferno becomes
Infer. Infer becomes red. Inferno disappears. Infer is red.

What will happen, lest everything go? I come here and everything
be, with wonderful triumph of spirit so callous before, and soft,
soft now. What be beauty if this isn’t?

Others think much, probably more. Yet their thought is confined,
limited, willingly so, and mine – oh mine! – goes with the breeze –
sometimes with them, where stagnate waters lie. And I cry for that,
for I can’t escape, because I return again, again, again.

You go there, and laugh. Laugh for eternal nights and youth;
those things away in night when young – when it’s cold and
something else is wanted, yet unknown in the blaze of youth.

The all-encompassing, red-hot, destructive, fire, that’s fed with
an incompetence sprung from reckless, wanton, youth.

What little things – a second, even – can wreck great potential, employed
with carelessness that must always be, for a whim cannot be suppressed
in this state.

But what could it have been, if not for the cadence of her voice?