I.  Allegro

The vanity of the sanity will save this poet's face.
Respecting and rejecting those not of this Age of Grace.

Shaping, raping, escaping the flow of a forged history
writ by the hands of mortals unwitting and unworthy.  

An Age of Grace, denial of the backslid rise of a species
evolved in the image of perfection.  Failing as we please.

The cowardice of evil, the power of hope, coping as best
we can with the limitations in this most damning test.

Tempest and temporal infestation in an Age of Grace, degradation
of our souls for goals given us in self-serving declaration. 

Conflict is in the essense of the quantum nature
of this universe.  Wars so often fought over nomenclature.

Proud as panthers.  eclectic.  electric and resplendent
in the winged robes of an Age of Grace made ascendent.


II.  Fortissimo

We survive, made alive by the blood we rise above,
conceived in the flesh, our hearts seeking love.

Tempering the sadness with the taint of decay
that presses us to the edge of the ending of the day
where the prophet and the penitent agree on what they say:
this world will pass away when the gods come down to play.

Fickle victory eludes us, excludes us, by the chance 
of random fate.  Brownian motion in the potion, elegance
in the elegiac ocean of our considerations.  Decade's dance
around us, soundless and cacophonic.  The martyr's stance.

Unworthy to drink the cream of the goldenheart, unfit
to wave the blinding banner of tatters sewn in a split
instant of epiphany.  The knowledge of reason, the bit
of the trojan horse, taken in a mouth hedged by lips split.

We must rise above our circumstance, advance our case
to the court of a god who would hear us if we spoke.  Face
the truth of the demons in the mirror and arise from the place
we have been left by our feeble fears and erase our disgrace.

We inflict our pains and constrict our brains,
seeking some relief from the chafing of our chains. 


III.  Pianissimo

God, my prayer is not ornate, but it is sincere.
I need no other reward for that I have been granted here,
this life is sufficient.  Sensing that your love is true,
I need no other gift or dispensation from you.
There are many here, more worthy than I
who will live and toil and sweat and die
excluded from your grace through no action
of their own.  To atone for the random affliction
of these lost souls, please grant my place and rest,
in the infinity of conciousness, to some soul not blessed
with the fortune I have tasted.  The mere realization
of all I have been given, unearned, is more than compensation.


copyright William F. DeVault (wfdv)