Tuesday, May 26, 2020

At Hephaestus’ Temple

After Linda Gregg

The outside gold is just the female form
Dancing to invisible music. No woman
Can live in this dark, ceilings blackened,
Walls that peel with brooding. So little light
Ever shines through, but it’s still too much
Easy sustenance, instant forgiveness, for him,
Too much of the outside world to overcome,
For it turns these gods he casts into mortals.
Thus, his heart could never leave
Through that window, where dianthus quivers
And swallowtails dive. There’s the work of existing
Independent from what lives to merge and die
In patterns that are ever-inexplicable.
You say gold and silver have no value,
Being stolen from the earth. That may be
Here in the dark, but out there they stand
Apart from everything, give the meaning
That is lacking, even as they’re moldering
With the same dark heart that created them.
Faces almost human, as if pulled
Outside of time, petrify like the charred trees
Along the river of oblivion.