Sonnet: To Time

Today we move in jade and cease with garnet

Amid the ticking jeweled clocks that mark

Our years. Death comes in a casual steel car, yet

We vaunt our days in neon and scorn the dark.

But outside the diabolic steel of this

Most plastic-windowed city, I can hear

The lone wind raving in the gutter, his

Voice crying exclusion in my ear.

So cry for the pagan girl left picking olives

Beside a sunblue sea, and mourn the flagon

Raised to toast a thousand kings, for all gives

Sorrow; weep for the legendary dragon.

Time is a great machine of iron bars

That drains eternally the milk of stars.