End-Game
When even the simplest things become a strain,
the lift of leg to put on socks,
the unavoidable exertion of that flight of stairs;
we scramble to re-examine the choices we have to make:
willingness to bend before a scurrilous wind,
to accept the fact that evening follows hard
upon an exciting afternoon, that the morning light will
do little more than irritate one’s eyes to tears,
and that the manipulations this game requires,
have gradually, imponderably, become just too hard,
and all the creative surges we have known,
are now a muddy stream, remote and nebulous as a dream,
For now those vibrant tides are ebbing fast,
the measures of that life beyond our grasp.