Success Versus Failure Poem by C Richard Miles

Why do we build up waxwork monuments
To celebrate our mini-victories?
For we must know that in the spotlight
Of true scrutiny, they start to melt,
And then expose their feeble framework
Supported merely by our hubris.
And yet our petty failures seem to be
Constructed out of hardest porphyry
That even doubt-denuding time seems
Not to have the strength to wear away.
How speedily success recedes
While each ephemeral error
May endure for all eternity,