Who has never-in life’s darkness-closed their eyes and searched their mind,

Looking, hoping, reaching, thirsting for that memory sublime,

For the last hour of our happiness, to smile back on joyous times?

Recently, for this part, I threw open Mem’ry’s door,

And met a man behind it whom I’d never seen before,

But when I told him of the treasure for which I’d journeyed to my core,

He bowed his time-steeped head and asked, “Well, what’d you come here for?”

“I told you,” I insisted, and restated my demand

To sift through my life’s hourglass for a certain grain of sand

An hour of life’s rapture that I would take in hand

To bring back with me some pleasure to the bleak and conscious land.

Again the old man bowed his head-this keeper of life’s dreams-

And preceeded to rephrase-the cad!-his first inane query.

With some effort, now he asked, “What is it you would see?”

I tell you now this madman was infuriating me!

Now screamed I in frustration, “I have told you twice before!

Now move yourself, you vile old thing! You’re blocking up my door!

And if you will not assist me, I will tear apart this store

In my honest desparation for this thing I’m searching for!”

But the old man stood his post and asked, “What is it you would find?

Would you see the sad childhood you so quickly left behind,

Or the trials of youth that followed that so taxed your heart and mind

That you locked them here, in safes, among their tainted, tear-stained kind?”

“Villian,” I replied, “Have you really no regard

For the direness of my need that you still hold all fondness barred,

Locked from my weary eyes? Oh, yes, I know my life’s been hard,

But there must have been a time when fate’s hand stroked and did not scar!”

“Master,” he replied then, “I will show you all I can,

But I can’t produce what you request. Alas, I’m but a man!

And as record books and pictures sprung from his wrinkly hands,

He said, “I cannot change the past for you-alas, I’m but a man!”

I took from him the pictures, but they withered in my hold.

They drew not a life at all-a mass of sufferings untold,

And images-grotesque indeed-began there to unfold,

And I checked and double-checked for what I’d come there to behold.

“Enough!” I told the old man, “Show me no more of this kind.

Surely in here, somewhere, is a truly happy time.

Let us hasten to it, so I may ease my troubled mind.

I know I was once happy. Oh, there must have been a time!”

Now the old man grabbed a box, and its contents he outpoured-

Oh, loathesome! These the worst of times, steeped in blood and tears and gore.

“Lies! I’ve had friends! I’ve had parties! Show me these no more!”

And I knocked the old man over in my haste unto the door.

But he simply smiled up from his place upon the floor,

And once again, he asked me, “Then, what did you come here for?”