The Hunger of History

The world you see so much before you
Did not dare exist in the Golden Age
For History had no dearth of tales of courage then
With which to fill its page.

Admittingly, its appetite for observation was capped
With the jottings of nefarious doings
But only for variety,
For the heart of its meal was valor.
Now with grimy bib exposed and ravenously rapt,
Its diet consists of ruings.
The joint’s picked clean of heroics
And the scraps can’t improve its pallor.

Emaciated and untrustworthy,
As those short on sustenance are,
It yet provides the grim fascination
Of a once-full gleaming jar –
To wonder what it might be fed
And mourn for its lacking – that is our fate today
As it sits, banging forks on the table
Now the Heroes have all gone away.