While merrily drunk on proud vintages,
While the dark new moon lies cloaked behind clouds,
While clean, industrious folk sleep and dream,
And the idle markets await their crowds,
Together we forget the coming dawn,
Who daily disrespects our mortal race
With her honest rays and revealing beams
That shine such hard light on each aging face.
Instead we clothe ourselves in nudity—
In the habit as that which we were born—
And sport in an echo of our lost youths
From which ease, increasingly, we are torn,
And, hiding ourselves upon each other,
Make as though night shall ever cloud the streets
Whose welcome blindness will never censure
Our maturing souls or our tumbled sheets.
David Murphy 