Question

To answer your question:

Yes,
I can see
a way forward,
but nostalgia
holds me back
although
there is nothing
to which I long to return. And

yes,
this is nonsense,
but it is also
true.  I want to cling
to what has passed,
although I longed
to be free of it
while it was happening.

It was all dull and
heavy and I was weak,
or unwilling and lazy,
angry that I was not
a giant or sorcerer or both
though I neither studied
nor built my strength.  The question

of whether I wanted what I chose
never occurred to me; I simply
took what came
and then whined and puked along,
my belly never full enough
to hold the bitter with the sweet:
I had expected all to be sweet,
did not accept that balance
mattered, and did not work
to hold them both.

What needs doing
for me to go on is clear, but
my arms ache, my legs groan,
I have never transformed
anything into another thing —
ah, here I go again
with being the same man
I always have been, slave to the magic
and brawn I still think I once had
but for which there is no evidence.

In rare moments
that are becoming rarer, I can still be
wonderful, immobilized but awed
by a possibility of an easy progress,
a liar at peace with a future
in thrall to a fabricated past;
more often I just want to lie down
by the roadside and be forgotten,
real at last, my story left untold
except as a cautionary tale…

and then, the One comes
who baffles me: how is it
that I may be this wrecked
and still be loved enough
by anyone?

She calls me up
from the dirt and when I do not rise,
comes to my arm and raises me,
filthy with my own damage and neglect,
and holds me there until I can see
something, someone
other than myself,
and asks me a question:

can’t you see a way forward
now?