Pantheon
Sitting in the shade of a pillar, enticed
By the figures carved of marble stone –
A pantheon rose over, dimming bellows
From all the burrows of their mythy mind,
And I, forsaken from their rift
(Much of the temple denied in me)
Sparked flint from my mortal tongue,
Flamed with arid, lips of woe:
“I’ll admit it, I lost. Your skill
Far too great. Far too long
Have you laboured, till the next
Dawn, and to me you are circled
Above our revolutions, pitied sum
Of Man! Dirigible to your works
Am I! Swallow on your cloudy roam!”
And the pantheon, with all divinity
Gleamed with eyes of silent beams
Espousing themselves, their pull of space,
Criss-crossed in time, my mimicry
A stolen word from earliest flame!
They, done with their legendry,
Entranced the holy sanctified
While my hands bound their shadow
Clipped from it, to make my veil!
What have you to say to them?
O, their tongue is far beyond your dusk –
What have you to say, mired
In the verses that hardly span
Earth, the pit of hell, the stars?
“I’m nothing! I learned nothing!
For naught am I, clay to your idea,
Nor does my wisdom breach the spheres,
Designed in classical concord to the drift
Of aeons speaking their services!
My time is already at an end,
And story set in realm, rafted upon seas
That wash to shores compassed by your tide!
Fall in failure, regret and crawl,
As timpani of a thousand ants!
I weep, I am nothing – Pantheon,
To your form, golden in all your curves,
From embodied desire sparked in the sun!”
But they, always watching, stern
In their chatting, never silent though
Their lips lack movement. Speak they do
In symbols limned from centrifuges.
They spoke of first arc, rimmed in man’s
Eyes – first light we hardly see,
Scalded first brain with its plight,
And sent the seeker, naught of seen.
Then, the stench of man, divides
My heart from the shadow of the stand
Where the statues stood, ambient night
Of a thousand Gods – a sister smile
Took my arm, held in its sway,
And said: “I am the human verse within,
Coursed through veins, dissolved in ink,
And one step beyond your amplitude’s
Crest. I am the best of men – stirred
In empathy to your woe. I do not
Speak much anymore. But sing
Upon your raging musk, gardening
The eternals that do float. Seek,
Beyond the quaff of dream,
And find – your pantheon sang in me.”
