Greatness & Grand Folly

I find the difference between Greatness and Grand Folly

To be as slight as the difference between life and death

One found in a sober breath, the other in a somber, intoxicated sigh

I wait patiently, minute by minute, day by day, year after year

To measure this difference in some precise way

Only to find the distance immeasurable by any form or fashion

Of my meager invention or stolid scientific imagination

It is a final distinction made only in the act itself

Without conviction, without retribution, without will or purpose

Thoughtless as well as formless, Without feeling or contention

Not even a sense of ambition or confusion or ambivalence

As simple and mindless as the act of breathing itself