Profile of a famous artist in old age

There is a longing inside us
The hideous need, the terrible.
The terrible grasp, longing
For what we may never have.
About me fly the whims of
Misspent youth and age,
Follies of life and love and strife
Ah! What of it? Only,
This: there is longing still.
Even death does not remove,
Nor time's harsh embrace decay --
We long for perfect we
May never know, & we
Grasp in vain for things
Smaller men do not see.
One achieves greatness in
The flower of youth, or in
The fullness of life and age.
I have lived this long in vain hope
That my flowering was still to be,
Still to come; would to God that
It could be so, but it was not.
Those first acts, the first bloom
Of creation, raw, will never come,
Never be again; and I stumble over
Them again and again and again
By God! Trying to pick of pieces,
To Create -- But even God flowered
Once, with Creation, and failed
With man. This insight denobles Him,
But makes my own tragedy easier
To Bear in this small room with
A heater and pen and nothing of fame.
I do not die. Nor kill myself. Why,
I wonder, since the fullness of my gift
Is gone, but it is simple: The Devil Fell,
But I wonder, now, if that was not
His gift, only others shouting such things,
In fear, and he wil bloom, eventually,
To outshine the promise of his youth.
I am not devil, and yet I yearn for this
Perfection I may never know, and is not
Mine to have, or hold; but I only wish
To give it away to the world.