Paper pale faces wan and blankly gaze
from worn-out eyes within tight folded hands.
So deafly lost in the rhythm that plays
their lives through the cycles that fate demands.
Lie the pretty cards flat on the table,
Order them in straight ranks and tidy rows.
Turn the pretty cards to tell a fable
of life and how it is and how it goes.
Crowns and diamonds, and swords and hearts and kings,
a lonely man hanged by his heel, a queen
in judgement throned, calmly dividing things
into dreams known and nightmares yet unseen.
Are our lives held fast by dancing pattern
our fates shaped by what paper cards discern?