How will evil fall?
Shall it be ground underneath
Purely distilled truth?
Truth and good and right
And beauty cannot be stopped.
Many will have died–
For this, gladly die.
For truth is all that we have.
Truth, and nothing else.
All beauty and right
All goodness and all kindness
Come from perfect truth.
Distilled by reason
Distilled by our harmony
With the truth itself.
More tragic are those Gods who still remain.
Olympus fell; yet cast about Them thrice,
You’ve wrapped Them up in filthy sheets of ice;
And jeer that none will recognize Their Reign.
Though hidden in plain sight, so great remain
These Paragons of Beauty; Their Devices–
Their Sublime Creations–could entice,
Enlighten, and inspire, if Their Domain
Were not so hidden, frozen, and unclear.
Yet through your filth, such Gods might still be seen;
Though locked beneath a century’s demean.
If one unbidden eye should chance to turn,
A mortal soul might taintless beauty learn;
And this is what you meretricious fear.
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And who are these who rape my Gods when long
They have returned to ash, and dust, and bone?
No right have these to slash Them, cruelly thrown
And bleeding, from the Heights where They belong.
And who are these ignoble beasts; this throng,
Who mutilate and rape Them, unbeknown,
Then take their turn upon each vacant Throne,
While still They fall, unknowing, from this wrong?
Do these believe their acts are in the right;
As though belief could claim to sanction rape?
Do these take carnal pleasure in the night,
While horrified Their past devoted gape?
Or do these quake with fear, while knowing well,
Their lie alone will have them burn in Hell?
So often do I feel myself alone;
A shadow-being as dwelt in shadowed land;
Within a hidden place of shadowed sleep;
To drift within the dreams of others; and
Although I live surrounded, I am prone
To wake whilst do they rest. So lonely, I;
At best: am tossed to shadows and their keep;
And, though I prize the quiet time thereby–
Such times, surreal they seem; as unbeknown–
Am I, to any life beyond my mind–
Enveloped, parallel, and buried deep
From all of God’s creation–misaligned.
Until I’m thrown, myself, to dream; and make
To leap and join the world, wherefore I wake.
Anticipation shaketh down below
Wherefore I shan’t release thee shouldst thou call
Or even beg, as seem thou to prefer.
I feel thee, languid, try my binding crawl
With tense delight enveloping thee slow;
So push and crawl and twist thyself away.
That every moment my delight would stir;
And ripping, take my kill. And thou: my prey,
Imagine, over all our blood doth flow,
When deep within thy flesh my talons rake;
And to thy plaintive cry shall not defer
‘Til take my fill of all that I may take.
This predator… no… nary turn around:
Thou knew’st, though he prefer his prey face down!
Long thence I, of thy miracle, so learned:
This, seeming to perfection, thou didst play;
Such beauty rare, I heard of this, thy bow,
That thou, such Earthly-wrought, couldst make Divine.
Such beauty, then too beautiful, were spurned;
For seeming not of Earth, thy beauty lay;
So rarely this, some Earthly ear should know,
This Heaven-wrought Divinity of thine.
To hear these rise from Earth to skies I’ve yearned;
Thy notes of such beatitude convey;
That soar and lift mee ’round where next they goe;
And to the stars that make, to thee, their shrine.
To paradise returned, I beg thee stay;
This music overflow; thy soul, to mine.
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When I, within the mirror, thee regard;
But not of thine, which shone in silvered glass;
Nay, this, that all the many years discard;
As though no year might ever for thee pass.
So fair, thy sherry coloured hair and eyes;
Thy perfect form I see, as straight and hard;
Thy smile, seeming beautiful and wise;
And strong thy limbs, by time are nary scared.
If thou couldst know what wonders thee await;
More wondrous than most any thou surmise;
If thou couldst only see thy pain abate;
And know how much of life this pain denies.
How few thy years; alas, how little wait;
My life surpast, when thou such things instate.
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
David Emeron: Sonnets 