The tired despair I feel on rolling back the latest code
Should really not compare to heartsick feelings for the wronged,
The pained, the lost, the dying, lonely unwashed left alone.
And yet….
The hordes of homeless, each intersection’s beggars,
The staring children of hopeless hunger and mothers with matted hair,
Compel me only to turn away, distract from distrait worries
And fulminate against the state of things today,
While the abandoned code, the project furled, product of months
Of labor, months of work – and fear for the inescapable post mortem,
These and these alone strike the strings of despair and angst,
Pull me into funk and woe.
No, no, that’s untrue.
The feeling wrapped around my spineless heart is more belike
A shallow, petty, sighing stound of hopeless black fatigue.
Unused test cases lie in readiness for needless tests
Of phases next; evaluations lacking portent sit
Within the drive unread. A sad and lingering pall, a dearth
Of meaning strikes its atonal chord against my mind,
Impaired by scores of doubts and Monday-morning quarterbacks.
But for the truly hapless, haunted by a thousand plagues
Of man’s devising, scalded by the boiling furies, damned
By broken gods bereft of power save ability
To more entirely make still lower the lowest of the low,
Why, then, no pang of anger, love, regret, or fear?
How have the humans ceased inhabiting soul and memory,
Replaced by ill-defined concern for projects not to be?
Perhaps the hungry only can provoke anxiety,
Their millions meaningless before salvation’s hopelessness.
While futile plans betrayed by harsh light may yet
Inspire redoubts of hope that make to dream what might have been.
So projects failed may be inspected, viewed, dissected, while
The plights of many – nay! a single human only can
Provoke a fatal, fearful contemplation leading straight
To resignation final ‘gainst the horrid failure seen
Within my all-too-awful worthless human soul and heart.
[coda]
But with this gentle screaming comes a hope revealing near
To human pathos and an empathetic wish for more
Than this too fragile longing towards a reconnection sure
Of sinew, synapse, temper, merit, worthy spirit most
Of all. Perhaps a mad redeeming may arise from such
A dreaming: each to each, one heart availing hope to souls
Now helpless, seeming lost but then rekindled by one
Most tiny ember, thoughts of deadlines, costs and benefits
Then ended and replaced by hungry yearning for true hearts’
Returning, facing one another eye to eye to view
With weakness open, strength refocused and unbroken breath,
Resolved to take always the things that are just as they are.
So may unworthy worry and repugnance be at ease,
And not subside as other mazy lost velleities.