Black and White

My biggest folly has always been
To dwell too much on bygone times,
To breathe the incense of the bygone past,
And behold in wonderment
As flashes of its merriment
Pass before my very eyes,
Linger until I am tempted to be part,
And then they depart,
And I stand alone and watch in awe;
Consternation dissolves me from within
Like a poison from which there is no escape:
It is all too late.
The memories are gone—
They’ve faded into the dawn,
Which happier men think of
As the bearer of all hope,
Even as they grope
Around blindly
For that which they can’t see,
Nor have any control over.

“A man who lives not for the bright future,
But for the old decaying past.
What a joke! Let’s all laugh.
And we can leave him alone
As he walks the wrong way,
Down the wrong path,
Far, far away
From the rest of us folk,
Who are marching toward the Promised Land,
Leaving footprints in the sands
Of Time,
And not hovering above them immobile,
Fading gracelessly into the shadows.”

Such folk, they live for the light,
They have the sight
To see what’s in front of them.
But I, who’ve been blind from birth,
Ever since I stepped onto this earth,
Have not their gift of sight:
I see no light.
Where I live, it’s perpetually night.
So what difference to me are a few small steps,
Or even a giant leap toward the bright future,
The White that others go looking for?
That alien, impersonal land
Has no room for me,
And even if it had,
I could not live in it too long.
There must be an end
To every song.
So why not here,
And why not now,
For mine?

Therefore I, a man of the past,
Choose to be frozen in time,
In the black-and-white photographs
That will soon fade to black,
And cease to rhyme.