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.
