the sickness

The sickness!
Does it ever end?

From blood first drawn on childhood knee
To flesh which, shapeless, clings to human frame
All of life’s a question:

The sickness!
Does it ever end?

The farmer young sows seed of love
Who then at harvest reaps the beat-less heart.
And so he starves.
Empty to heaven he cries:

The sickness!
Does it ever end?

Six-thousand years the scholar climbs,
And pushing on may learn why flowers grow.
Or why and orphan weeps.
Sisyphus,

The sickness!
Does it ever end?

At last, the hermit
In desert far from all this earthly trouble
Forgets the sand was once that garden old;
Home of cunning worm.
Over dunes he hears a whisper:

The sickness.
May it never end.

baloo