The Blue Eyed Boy o f Wonder The young man Was repelled By the rhetorical & preferred the image He saw as a child With a new man’s strength Ecstatic with novelty & pleasure & ease Then he weakened Time sped up Objects — no longer images suspended miraculously And rhetoric became required (You could call it a fall from grace ? ) As he desperately Sought out meaning amid the horror Values Now ordered By his tired mind Beauty no longer seduced him For long Everything, even His visions, Felt full of effort What was “ Life ” But labour ? Forgotten, the blue eyed boy of wonder Copyright Malachi Doyle 2023.