He Wishes for Better

He wishes for better—
As if in the wishing
He were doing a worthy deed,
Long overdue among the countless
Neglects in this haggard world.

He sets it aright in the vista of his mind,
And manages, when he can,
To feel some satisfaction in it—
For it is his due, he thinks,
For having burst the bonds of convention
In daring to think, for a change,
How things should be.

And he is certain of it—
And of himself—
And of his deftness of conviction.
And he wonders from time to time why they don’t
Ask him to do more such work—
Why he isn’t summoned
To do this more often—
Visionary that he is.

And tomorrow—
Or perhaps the day after—
He will wish about something else.
And so begins a new venture,
The better for which
This world will surely be,
He is certain,
When he has at last
Wished it hard enough
That he can mine from it
That scant morsel of piety
That he is fortunate sometimes
To feel after such great works.

And should someone else
Wish the wish alongside him,
Lauding the greatness of his vision,
He is more sure to sense
The reassuring signal
That he has got it right
Yet once again,
And that his worth
To this world is certain.

And so it goes—
And so go his years,
Until at long last,
He discovers,
Or not,
That he has done little
But to wish things different—
That his life’s great work has consisted in
The slightest of all possible deeds—
In mental child’s play—
And that he has not taken, after all,
What he thought should be
His rightful place
Alongside the champions of the ages
Who, themselves, had forged those
Most precious of moments of history
By daring not merely to wish,
But to make it so.

He may, in fact, never see the difference
Between him and them.
He may never realize that
To a million wishers,
There may be but one
Who dares to do—
And that he has not been that one.