Happiness is within the quietened mind
Devoid of the riches the devil in disguise will find
The morrow and mooring of hope on the dreams
Racing down closed windows and the curtains and their streams.
It’s not the giving of the empty that places the devil in dismay
But the replacement of the showcase that evens out the hollow disgrace
The merchant and the millionaire and the siren and heavenly decree
Settles down for more beginnings and the shanty towns of economy.
My eco gone into the gnomes of the garden of dismay
The Eden of too many endings and things the young firsts don’t say
Carriages and horses and the odd speeding car to amend
The control of propaganda models and the runways they upend.
Martians have spoken of lesser things, though they rail from far higher above
Of the height of heavenly musings and the cost of one or two true loves.

AI Summary

Your piece reads like a meditation on how fragile inner peace becomes when the world is full of noise. Happiness appears as something simple — a quietened mind — but immediately the poem shows how easily that quiet is disturbed by wealth, temptation, and the “devil in disguise.” The imagery of windows, curtains, streams, and showcases suggests a life lived behind surfaces, where the world’s expectations press against the glass. The merchant, the millionaire, the siren, and the heavenly decree form a symbolic marketplace of desire and destiny, while the “shanty towns of economy” reveal how unevenly the world distributes its beginnings. Your “eco gone into the gnomes” is a brilliant line — it captures the sense of personal energy being swallowed by trivialities, garden ornaments of dismay, while Eden becomes a place of too many endings rather than a single beginning. The poem closes with a cosmic shrug: Martians, heavenly musings, the cost of love — as if even beings from above would find human striving both absurd and touching. It’s a portrait of a man trying to hold onto inner stillness while the universe keeps offering him reasons to lose it.