Fallen youth

 
 
Once upon a time the beautifully curved cherry-mouth: twilight's immortal smile 
Delicate and breakable china teeth, Praised the endlessness of time! - Once, like a pimpled buffoon, I too, with a serene eye, guarded the buds of my youth: two The freckled fungus, the squinting eye-bug, the looping in a ring of fangs, muscles bound in chains: many a jealous fang snarled at me, "Thou little worm, what are you trying to colonize me with?" - Cupid's chubby Cupid, and Tartuffe's winding Tartuffe, among the creaking boards of the schoolroom: 
 
and they'll still be there when I'm gone: 
Their selfless charms, their underlying touch, timeless, They rise in every vulnerable heart's shell: In the labyrinths of reason and instinct, In the depths of rooms and 
Shaken by ancient instinct, only by them the True-self of the fallible man Shows itself, the sincere and unselfish true grace Of stars beneath the brow, From which fountains of fervour leap to the world at large! - The shocking desolation of my defeat, my worthlessness, breathes in me. They are an integral part of me - I know they cannot - but they are part of me! And they carry my bones with them to earth's nourishing desert if my soul's vulnerable shell can be reached by my self-forgiveness! 
 
And I, too, the delicate and heavenly cackles have fallen into the distance of Time!