Tithonus

Emptiness surrounds me
to vie with the emptiness within me.
This hollowed gape was once
my hallowed cape, valley, and mountain.

All nature was me and I nature.
Trees, grass, sky, rain did in me dwell.
Now all in nature, as I am,
is sleet and ice, and falls and swells
with every rising falling pulse of mine
and slows….or does it stop?

No, that for me can never be.
For I live on and on to see
man fight man; country, country.
This wish on me no wish can be.
The curse within, the curse without.