our world
is doing a slow fade.
today's young
don't want what we had;
they never do.
one lot clocks off, another clocks on.
you'd think
there was nothing to learn,
nothing to teach.
it's best to keep quiet
when we hear them
mapping the world and
finding tygers.
privately, i don't think
their tygers
are a patch on ours;
but i smile silently,
just as my elders did
when i staked my claim
to their world.
they've gone and i mourn
the loss: i think if we'd shared our world,
all our tygers
would have shone more brightly.
but so it goes:
each generation tucked up under
the earth of the next.
the tragedy is not that we die,
but that our worlds die with us.
one day
there will be no more tygers.
one day
there will be no one left to praise
their lovely faces.
