This is not for the transient high,
nor for the echo of applause.
This is my stand against the sigh
of time’s inevitable cause.
The screen’s glow is a forge’s fire,
the keyboard, my reluctant pen.
I type through doubt and dead desire
to build what might remain, and then,
When rust has claimed this working hand
and eaten all the circuits through,
When I am less than shifting sand,
I’ll have discharged what I must do.
I do this for the starlit sense,
the worlds that others built for me,
a borrowed, timeless recompense
for moments of pure clarity.
To pay that priceless debt,
to pass the gift I did not make,
and offer, for the future set,
the same light that my soul did take.
So let this struggle, line by line,
this fight with ghosts, this patient will,
become a faint, enduring sign
for others climbing still.
Let some young mind, in future night,
struck by the same celestial ache,
find in my work a steady light
for the commitments they must make.