Fill me with anxiety, O Life!
Electrify me, make me nervous
Beyond any staid concern
For those things which challenge
Placid, flaccid ways, anachronisms of being.
Keep me tense, a-tiptoe,
Blinking at the novel,
Reaching out for those things
Just beyond my fingertips;
So that I may make patterns,
Dreams dreams, fashion worlds
Which will beat with life.
For I would be a man
And on the move.