weep not that the world changes
in all of your wanderings; open
to the oblivion that softly
wipes away the stain of yesterday

open still to the shifting of love,
to pleasure short-lived, inconstant,
to the welcome morning with its rays
of kindness and bitter clarity

open again to a thrill of hope,
young limbs yearning to be entangled,
to stern, hard-featured pain, also
dying quickly with long shadows

open all to the baptism of remorse,
to the bewitching, shifting landscape,
stars deep felt showing new, glow
dark, hesitant, this night above all

— with many words borrowed from William Cullen Bryant’s sonnet, Mutation, and one or two other sources.