How often have we passed beneath your radiance?

Barely glancing upward to the sky;

If we can but turn our eyes, earth bound cast,

Towards your face's collective brilliance.

Our hearts may reach out and our mind's aspire

To follow, step by step, the journey to a kingdom vast!

In life we set a true course;

Some hasten to the end, others dilly-dally;

Who gains the greatest value?

Is it the one who ploughs until the last?

The one who harbours a dream to savour,

Waits until retirement to enjoy life's tally.

Are rewards earned for greater diligence?

Dedication to an irresponsible endeavour;

Commitment immersed in pain or anguish.

Daily sufferance of the intolerable!

Lack of dignity, of accomplishment, of recognition.

What structure shall be a suitable monument?

What sense in hours cramped in automobiles?

Of peasantry, in unpleasant travel,

Upon corridors of grey, unwelcome track;

Motivated to what end? By what stroke or luck?

Who sets upon the tedium path, the hourly impasse;

Stretches the link beyond or above the overpass.

There are many good corpses, buried

Beneath green turf, covered by brown earth.

This was not the resting place for reflection,

But the outcome of unsophisticated privilege;

A loss of sense and harmony,

Where greed gained material priority!

The tribesmen on the plains of Serengeti,

Akin to the mediator, the Tibetan sophist,

Their fellow mentor of New Guinea;

Each paces life in hardship and expectation;

To end each day, prepared, as best as will be,

To meet the next, to gain satisfaction of mortality.

Modern man, the modern slave, chained,

By hidden bonds of stainless steel,

To Towers of Babel, entrenched in ascendancy;

Waiting to direct and control skeletons,

That rattle and soon lose intimacy;

Where they fall, the greater collection of the foolhardy!

1994 © Will George