Tag: work

What fury seizes me when fools hold sway,
When blunted minds preside and none protest,
When those who cannot see presume to say
Which path we take, and put our work to test.
I bite my tongue until the iron taste
Of silence bleeds — yet still I must defer
To those whose stewardship is nought but waste,
Whose word is law, whose vision is a blur.

Yet who am I to rail against the night?
I search my anger and am shamed to find
That pride, not justice, kindles all this light —
’Tis vanity that so inflames my mind.
The fault I name in others is my own:
A king of self, upon a rented throne.

How bold the ones who conjure things from air,
Who stake their sleep and savings on a dream,
Who hire the hands to realise what they dare
And lift from nothing some audacious scheme.
I watched them move and marvelled at the sight,
Astonished at their chutzpah and their nerve —
To risk what comfort asks us to repay,
To bend the possible beyond its curve.
I know my blood runs cooler, and my heart
Inclines to patience, to the page, and thought;
I lack the gambler’s gift, the founder’s art,
The fire that will not rest till something’s wrought.
Yet I shall cheer the builders from my post,
And feed with quiet hands what I love most.

I watched another take a seat I craved,
And asked what flaw had dimmed my early light —
What forfeit left my gold so long engraved
With someone else’s name, some other’s right.
Was merit not enough, or did I stray
At some unmarked and unreturning turn?
The years grow short; what youth had meant to say
Now smoulders where ambition used to burn.
And yet to rage against the shape of things
Is but to break oneself upon the wheel —
Perhaps each life is measured not by rings
Of office, but by what the quiet feel.
What went wrong? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps all
Was always tending toward a different call.