Thursday, May 10, 2018

What We Know About Him

The facts are bare, but the only hope offered
To capture the firefly in a bottle.
He “might have felt this …” and “may have said that …”
Before making manifest what's disembodied.

So biographers prosecute the defenseless,
Sift the not prevaricated through sieves
To try the sole capital crime for the immortals:
Standing apart from the way life is lived.

And is there not one among you, dear readers,
Who didn’t wish our blessed and deified hero
To be another of heaven’s cruel jokes,
A rancid vessel for impeccable hopes?

Such effort to bring the saint back from the clouds
Where he floated when we had denied him.
If even one inmate escapes from the island
There has to be, has to be some explanation.