Hi Joe,
I don't think we've met, but as a person of a certain age I can easily relate to your narrator's reluctance.
I like the liberties you've taken with the form, which bring metrical interest to what the Banjo described as "of all the sickly forms of verse". (See below if you're not familiar with that one.) The alternating lines of headless/catalectic anapestic tetrameter relieved by hardstopped trimeter scan perfectly to my ear, with the exception of L2 (omit 'and'?), L6 (I'd rather?), and L7 (much smoother with your original 'cannot', but maybe you're not going for smoothness).
Otherwise I'd say the slight tweaks you've made add bits of polish, but wonder if you might consider torquing the language up another notch in L2-3. Maybe save face for the finale and eliminate a couple of noncontributing pronouns (that) with something like "the visage I don't recognise" and since languish and wither are essentially synonymous, how about something like "The hopes I once held for its dignity wither." Is the emdash really necessary? Even an inverted sentence can slide without interruption.
I enjoyed the poem.
-Mary
Quote:
A Triolet
Of all the sickly forms of verse,
Commend me to the triolet.
It makes bad writers somewhat worse:
Of all the sickly forms of verse,
That fall beneath a reader's curse,
It is the feeblest jingle yet.
Of all the sickly forms of verse,
Commend me to the triolet.
A. B. "Banjo" Paterson (Australian, 1864-1941)
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