Yes, I confess that for some years past

Yes, I confess that for some years past
I lacked the zest needed just to live,
except that on my ramblings in the backstreets
I never let myself collapse, but rather
from fields of feeling that were colorless
I swung myself up into the rosy ones, of course
that sounds a bit romantic. Truth to tell,
I became bloated with my zest, knowingly,
and trotted along to find in it myself
when really it was not there, and only
self-enchantment made me young. I never ceased
instructing life to be a help to me,
and all the time it was my projection,
as in a mirror, of any amount of things,
and if there's valor in behaving so
I simply do not know, for all that I tried
not to go down too soon into dejection.