If I can love, why am I sent to die?
If I must die, what sense is there at all?
I’m given wings but must use them to fly
To distant shores where Time’s waves crash and fall,
Resounding through each moment. And yet why
Must I in joyful leisure heed their call?

Why does the world’s sad beauty to me call
When she, as I, am pressed by Nature’s die?
I’ve thought, but I’m still caught, and know not why
I cannot ken the meaning of it all;
Why do my spirits sink so with the fall
Of autumn leaves when they are blown and fly?

Why, when the leaf is pressed the Printers fly
Would hearken to another master’s call
And, careless, let the Printer’s last craft fall
In silence, spinning slowly down to die
And thereby thwart the Printer’s plan in all
I know not, I cannot imagine why.

Alas, my mind cannot conceive of why
His fingers, surely practiced, deft and fly
Would in their duty fumble now at all;
It seems indeed that there could be no call!
Is all the simple rolling of a die
That from a gambler’s hand must surely fall?

Was destiny etched subtly in the Fall;
Indeed is Adam’s sin the reason why
All men born since his day must also die?
Why from the bliss of Eden they must fly —
The Serpent, his own consciousness, would call
And tempt his soul and so exile us all.

Thus has the sage of eld explained to all
The genesis of why we’re born to fall,
Why we must hearken still to Nature’s call.
But life’s so short and bittersweet so why
Must all, when they’ve not chosen, so soon fly?
Before we’ve lived in full why must we die?

Could I know all, I’d barter to know why
All born must fall so soon, like leaves that fly
On plangent waves that call us home to die.