I Long for a Golden Age

I long for a golden age
when I could be among the first Christians to enter Hagia Sophia
and stand trembling at its vastness,
sunlight glittering from each small gold tile
on its walls and arches.
Or a French peasant standing in a wheat field
watching the Chartres cathedral rising
from the distant horizon.
I am weary of the meanness, the grayness,
the dark pessimism of the current age
as we wait for the oceans to rise and
submerge our cities,
wait for the last bee or frog to become extinct,
wait for melting glaciers to send their last drop to the sea,
wait for a new feudal age bereft
of divinely appointed kings,
overseen by undiluted greed,
populated by men and women who have forgotten how to plant.
We wait.  We have lost the trick of being able to hope.
I watch young people walking through the night,
as they seemingly talk to themselves
their faces bathed in the eerie bluish glow
emanating from their cell phones,
a white wire plugged into their heads.
I long to hear for the first time the strains
of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony echoing
through a candle-lit cathedral
instead of being reduced to bits and bytes on
a revolving plastic disk.
Somewhere in hidden caches
the rich hoard their gold and silver
only employing it for private pleasures
of putting it to work to multiply
even further.
They are no longer the patrons of
cathedrals or palaces or libraries or music or art.
They no longer explore; they only exploit.
They only count.