~~~ Compromise concert ~~~

This is like that.
A modest claim a child could make, and did,
And admiring faces beamed brighter than suns
At their son's promise.

This is like the spring an amateur turning pro,
And the eyes rove, searching further
Occasions for praise, acquiring dirty
Habits of seeing and saying.

Performance and the hankering after applause,
Distort vision and skew the mind.
The world dislikes such preening;
The smart-assed kid,
Gets sent to his room, rebuffed to sulk and suffer…

There, looking out of a window
He may find solace in how a branch
Of the oak tree quivers after a squirrel
Has made its leap -- like the twitch of a nerve.

At it again? Now, however,
Only for private comfort,
Another compromise, another distraction.
From the thing-in-itself.

Even to glimpse it
Requires reluctance, narrowed lids
And tight lips on which untruth's unlovely taste lingers,
A taint one learns to loathe.

Up in the sky,
The only beaming now is from
A pale moon long ago talked to death,
But this is redeeming,
Recognizing that there's
No gain, no advantage,
Still he feels sometimes an impulse,
Even the need, irresistible, to break
A decent silence and admit
Something even better,
That rare clarifying, satisfying, significant similitude.

It cannot beguile his old losses away,
But the small satisfaction
One takes in considering and seeing through
Is like a new stamp on the visa
Pages of his limp passport,
His permit de sojourn extended
At least for awhile.
A minor but vital triumph,
It perhaps deserves a cognac with his evening coffee...