Myth



“The only thing truer than Truth is the story.”—Jewish Proverb



Scrawled upon the tattered pages

And etched into the voices

Of shamans, poets, warriors—the masses,

A thousand stories telling the human story

Turn men into gods and gods into men.

Long before I heard the tale, I saw

The actors brandishing swords, hurling

Their tears to mingle with the seasons,

And knew that though a hand belongs to a man,

Its gestures belong to history.

And so I beckoned the storytellers,

Reached out to the depths of awareness

Where metaphors and hopes were born,

In search of the hopes and the metaphors

That would give meaning to the days.

At night the actors were dressed

In the wild extremes of emotion, and I danced

Cheek to cheek with bliss, despair, unyielding love,

Until sleep bled into wakefulness

And nothing seemed real.

In the crucible of the human psyche

Two plots are forged: one reveals

The desire to construct cities, institutions,

The other explains why mortals toil

To make a lasting impression on the earth.

Lifting a pen, the poet’s ink mingles with the blood

Of the living, the dead and the divine,

Yet naked and alone, he must admit that

Though all people are poets, all poets gods,

No image compares to the beauty of sunlight and stars.

Monday, October 12, 2009