Disclaimer – FMA and all things associated to it (including the characters and situations alluded to herein) are property of the person(s) who own FMA. Not me, in other words. The poem's mine, however.
Father to the Man
The palest green – he never was
A moment more then what you made.
Brought forth from gold and ebon bright
Crammed in a chamber all of shade –
Of bitter hope for briefest love –
To simply end as he began
A puppet on a mildewed stage
"The child is father to the man."
OOO
What worth was there was swift forgot
What worth the wonders that he hid?
The brilliance of an untried soul
A brief, bright spark. The crusted lid
Of avarice and long neglect
Bore down upon him. Fickle, wan
The shadow's echo of a dream
"The child is father to the man."
OOO
You never knew him. Don't presume
To claim scant kinship. What is kin?
Not absence that scored in the soul
Not benediction of a sin.
You only mourned what you had held
When lost in darkness. Then the Ban
Was nothing to your desperate cries.
"The child is father to the man."
OOO
Don't act surprised at what returned.
Drowned all in shadow, how could he
Emerge unscathed from all your sin?
And so you fled. So mote it be.
To late you learned what you forgot –
A life that passed 'ere it began.
He's only that which you have made –
"The child is father to the man."