A FOOL

There was a man - let's call him Bill
Whose big fault: over-fond
Of trying to look over the farthest hill
And glimpse what lay beyond.

Thinking the New would keep him young,
The Normal his chiefest foe,
He became a connoisseur of what
Nobody needs to know.

He had a wife, sweet children, friends
Who thought him good, contented,
But ever this ears rang with far-away songs
And laughter, until half-demented

He packed his rucksack in the night
And left his sleeping house.
"Like Tennyson's Ulysses," he thought.
His wife called him a louse.

He could have read, searched the internet,
To satisfy his rage
And curiosity, but always fled
The oblivion of old age.

Yet what we flee finds us at last
Time cannot be defrauded.
With money we can be misers, but
Hours cannot be so hoarded.

His boundless mind invincible,
He thought, would see him through.
Death found him foolish, loveless, lost,
But what a lot he knew!

Now in the coldest waste in Hell
Where none love, know, or remember
He gnaws the bone of of one worthless fact,
A dry, grey, burned-out ember.