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The Graduation of Prometheus
We, the
firebringers and conmen,
who studied in
those bestial nests
and were baptized in the nonsense of brooks
scattered like blown dandelions
impelled by wishes and novel space.
Some got
religion and faithfully tended waters
speaking only in liquid glossalalia about process.
Others, more luxuriant, drowned in scent-drenched fields
of waving crocus, awaiting powdered kingspice.
Most, though,
learned to warble the pleasant tunes
expected of dusty singers in antique cabarets
or of long caged mechanical nightingales.
At least they ate well. As for me,
I sought out
old groves hung with spanish moss,
testing the top-heavy heft of my maul against
the dying trees, clamping hungrily into fat stumps
and dragging them from the hazy shade to sharp-lit meadows.
Nothing burns
as cleanly as hardwood.
In a night purpled by suspicion and resentment
nothing else dispels the dark into familiar shadow
or recalls the whispers, near forgotten,
from a crowd of ecstatic witnesses.
.
. . . . . .
Brian Wilkins
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