The Lonely Critic Laments

'The Critic' by Allen Robert Branston (1817) (Wikimedia Commons Images)

I sense the ending, lack the script,

A familiar story’s meaning stripp’d,

Of what and when and who and how

Whatever, I want the ending now.

 

I go to shows and realize

The makers of them do despise

Their customers; ’tis crystal clear

Mammon not art, is worshipp’d here.

 

But have I miss’d a salient point?

Got it wrong, destroy’d the joint?

Confounded meaning with the clear

Unconscious cause of being here?

 

Art is always doomed to flunk.

From highest brow to utter junk,

Through countless, low, fun-free travails

To rare, derided, epic fails

 

And as with life, it seems to be

A proof of our humanity,

Through dark and shattered glass ’tis clear

In truth we mattered; we were here.