The Hermit

He lives in the house of the cats on the hill

he knows the despair of a floundering flock,
A squatter, no mortgage, no conscience, no bill,
the slow hand of God, just the hand of a clock.
Choked in a harness of celibate white,
cloud patterns painted on canvas of sky,
Sings muffled psalms in the dead of the night,
Life on the ground still passing him by.
Still bullies and beckons and tiptoes around,
Cossetted child of sterile and flat,
Never dug the soil of the peoples own ground
yet still he lives off the fat.
All men of power are ruined, by failure to see

the vampire of wealth sucking money,

Yet each man must risk the sting of the bee
to savour the flavour of honey.
No road is leading from him to the people
who shod his horse and loaded his cart,
Knows only the lofty, the shelter of steeple,
Hard kernel of chestnut; his heart.
Are his cares of this world, his shadow a shrine?
Is concern overflowing his cup?
Is his song of decline as yours is and mine?
In a collar that never turns up.