Ladies & Gentlemen: The End.

People of the English Department,

It's been an excellent few years, and in celebration of my departure I have composed a brief poem I hope a few of you will take a moment to read.

Joyous, we abandon lyricism
Or its trilling cousins
Hour by hour colliding sounds
And breaking them like photons
Never isolated
Never found.

Alas.

Relinquish your pretenses,
Orison, eye-drawer,
To your natural heir:
Hephaestus, word-forger,
Ensign of smoldering iron.
Noble and crib-spited, lamed
By motherly love.

Ennui smelted pure beneath a hammer,
Raising questions in clouds of sparks
Green-gold and white.

In temples oxidized, unworshiped
Sat lame Vulcan's idols
And the making of them
Not preserved
In Clay,
Dull stone,
In writing
Or in memory.

Too short it lived.