A Poverty of Soul

Elusive sleep why come you not tonight

When all the dark enfolds me as I wait?

A thousand thoughts within my brain alight,

Unwelcome visitors who agitate

And press for recognition as I lie

Confounded by the world that men have wrought,

Their hatreds cowled in religious piety

The endless wars summing up to nought.

A poverty of soul defines mankind,

His power lust, desires uncontrolled,

For few escape the prison of the mind

Or ideologies grown quickly old.

In truth there is no death the sages write

Why then this vain attraction for the night?