The time holds down your head; the era grabs your pen;
The powers that be manipulate your fingers;
It isn’t who creates, but when;
And art, the beauty of the world distilled —
Fate’s pharmacy, prescriptions of patterns and tinctures —
Is swirling in a flask the works of malingerers,
For everything’s the Age, and nothing is willed.
Somehow the Great Ineffable owns a hand;
The formless void yet forms a left and right;
Existence in the west is to enjoy and fight,
And in the east to suffer and understand.