That Through These Chains... Poem by Oleh Wolansky

That through these chains we break our daily bread
To inhabit spheres of competence: dejected spires of solace.
Merely a conventional cupboard of velleity.

That we imbibe chunks of cereal
To plow whole grain, or,
Enjoin a cup of coffee with a bid to perform the tasks
Prescribed by the impetuous design of a caffeinated satiety;
Into the oncoming traffic of the day that begins at the sound of a gun.

To allow sleep to come now would be ill advised indeed!

Never to return to the time when all was right with the world a time before the end of innocence, in the infancy of mind: I.

Before that personal counterpart began entreating
To take part in an ever present festival of the heart.
A joyous parade of the soul ensconced by the demands of a new head;
Now demanding attention as a nestling bird;
Whatever needs immediate fulfilling becomes by nature’s demand,
The weight of a burden that becomes endlessly onerous, and incessant,
The implacable object of a subjective hangnail.

II

To end in the middle that would be unpleasant!
Life begins everywhere anew through the boughs of an ancient oak,
Renewal with every enduring second, in every fragment of birth and death.
Somehow there is always room for redemption in the Romantic’s heart?