I thought I did.
I had a glimpse of the future;
It was inevitable and bright
Gilded and clear,
Shining and perfect.
But I knew not what it was.
I did not care to check.
I assumed that what it was
Was what I wanted.
What I wanted
Was self-evident;
Wasn’t it?
I thought the word ‘complete’
Was something to strive for.
But you cannot strive for something
That when you find,
You shatter the meaning of.
But I grew and matured
In my mind,
And clung on to this idea of completeness.
And when I lost this idea,
I lost myself.
All my aspirations had been wrapped up
In a dream
That I had not bothered to see the details of.
Where had it gone?
I did not look.
For how do you look for
An idea,
A vague notion,
A glimpse of the future?
And I was lost.
I knew where I was
But not where I was going.
I knew where I had been
But not what it had meant.
I didn’t know what I wanted
But I knew what I had wanted.
And that adds up to nothing
In the end.
And now
When the hour is late.
When the voices have trickled to a murmur.
When I can concentrate on myself.
I search for my new glimpse of the future
But cannot find it.
My mind does not want to betray me again.
Can I live in a world of vague generalities?
A world of fuzzy outlines?
A place of what might have been?
No.
But there is no other choice.
There is no either/or.
I will go
In my mind.
I will search
In a dream.
I will find my future
In the end.
But not now and not soon.
For my failures are so recent to me
That they block everything,
Like smog hanging over the skyline
On a humid summer day.
I can see the beginning
Where my foundations are
I can barely see the middle
As the clouds conceal and illuminate new portions every minute.
I cannot see the end;
It is simply and encompassingly
A gray mass.
