Agnosco vos patiamini at Manus Meum

To all of those that I failed in my youth,
the ones to whom I spoke an awkward truth
or careless lie, in malice or in love,
touched with iron hand cloaked with velvet glove
to frame a moment still suspended here,
in time, in words, and in memory clear:

Forgive me for the ills I did bring you
as you cherish joys that I did sing to
calm your heart, or stay your troubled dreamings;
the saint, the sinner, they were mere seemings
formed of fantasies that belied a plan,
draped upon the shoulders of but a man.