A Ruined man

Creeps dead-footed

Under clouds run to dusk.

A memory of youth

Draws him dreamily

Toward the old fenced crease in the adult world.

On old, old way of children

Permits his crooked amble

Between the crumbling hubris of his kind.

Scorn he knows

Drives him past the forms he knew,

The whipping wires overhead echoing joy long dead.

Shame even's his gait

Past children playing under the gray wind

To the clatter of leafless tree limbs biding the return of their kind.

At last a friendly gate

A fresh place to spend the shreds of a weary day

Beneath the whipping wires—as the sun dims on a tool worn down.