I hold my head up high because
I dare to see the sun,
And the sky, and the stars,
And all the things that we ignore,
That pass us as we run.

We don’t stop. We can’t stop running.
Never slowing, never stopping,
Until we have grown old, until we can run no more.
I ran and I grew old and now I can run no more.

I have known the suits and faces
That we wear in our ambition,
Meretricious faces with a smile that hides the teeth.
I have seen the boy with brighter eyes, the boy with golden hair
And the muddied hands, a whiter smile, a breath of fresher air,
A tried and faded image that awaits me in the mirror,
A reflection of a lifetime, now a lifetime’s shadowed dream
An old, retired life behind these deeper, wrinkled eyes.       

What is this end?
Am I to simper, sitting here,
A hand resting idle on each paralysed thigh,
With the shadow of my past mistakes,
Attempting former glory,
Attempting to rekindle some old movement in this sty?

I regret this resting end,
Some present sterility.
Tranquil. Quiet. A softer life to breathe
Memories – only memories – into this old frame,
A frame with blurred pictures – never focused.

I was so desperate to arrive, so eager to an end,
That I missed the men and women that I might have called my friends,
And the music that has faded that I failed to comprehend,
As I ran, always running, as I ran towards my end.
I have known the regret. I have got it all wrong.
I remember always running, but not what I ran from.  

This is my end.
This is my end.
A shadow and a silence for the years a fool would spend,
When all along the world was never quite so mute a friend.
There was music. There was laughter.
But it drowned as I ran faster.
It drowned beneath the thunder of the racing of my feet,
And now the shadow whispers,
Whispers shadows of a memory,
A memory half-remembered,
Of a life in its December,
An end in only silence as it’s rendered obsolete.