Formless

The world has opened up its tombs
That we may walk within ourselves,
And while the living flesh presumes
To reign eternal, still it delves
Into inevitable doom.

At birth, we are a vacant slate
Awaiting reason to provide
Our substance; yet we desecrate
The name of truth, and we abide
Destruction where we might create.

In death, the slate is set aside,
But tainted souls are never clean;
Of one whose life is spent astride
Immoral means, the end will glean
The flesh – and yet their sin resides.

They rightly fear no afterlife,
Nor we should talk of paradise:
Delusions all, corrupt and rife;
But neither do they fear the price:
The wages of a sinful life.

To be by time’s advance disarmed
And cast as all to the abyss,
From whence returns no word or charm:
Without a sense of what it is
To live in peace, and do no harm.

When time’s amorphous well runs dry,
And doom befalls the one for whom
The simple pleasures satisfy:
For any righteous soul in bloom,
There comes a welcome time to die.

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