He’d heard that shoes could make the man.
And so he chose them, carefully:
To show his mastery and span
Of wide parts of society

But one day, when he had to go,
He left one here, to long decay;
It’s empty of its context now,
And baldly shorn of its cachet

For things that outward we display,
Without our inwards, lack all worth:
Like tracks whose trains have gone away,
Or blogs whose authors flee
The earth