Walking past midnight to another day
I remember the friendship of youth,
how splendid it was to agree
with love and d**h, with everything
that could shift us into being,
the great making of something special
that made for moral finery and wealth.
And how ardnt such thinngs can be.
In this midnight silence now these thoughts
come not surprising but approving:=
they were our baptisms,
long nights spent in conversations
that covered the whole world there and back,
that shook the stars from their skis
and knocked the moon senseless
as our affirmations grew.
We were masters of the world,
there could be nothing there without
our thoughts, without our strict approval,
without our instigations.
And as each spoke in turn ideas seemed
to spew into a knowledge onyl we could know,
a knowledge that was big and bold and beautiful,
a knowledge of the soul.
Twenty years since those words were heard,
twenty years in which to change our minds.
But now walking through this midnight,
the sky well stocked with stars, the moon
as ripe as she could ever be, it seems so little
has changed sinc those streams of words
made us poets and fine philosophers
explaining the world and each separate
consequence of human thought and deed.
Nothing much has changed since those
days now, except, perhaps, the friends are new
and the open skies have given way
to the brash bare light of a pub's ballroom glare,
the place new friendships gather to mull
the finer points, the radiance of the poet's
stars, the importance of the philosopher
and his mutterings, whoever's turn
it is to buy another round of drinks
and wonder what the hell,
Cogito ergo sum.