Hands Against The Glass

 

The pilgrim spent his innocence
planning vessels of romance.
Diligent at the grower's fence
he piped the shrill vine's tendril dance.
With ankles snared in clover grip
he sang his someday valiant ship:

"It sails against the fragile tide
to shores unmarred by jealous kings
with stores of beauty piled inside
to teach the race of better things."
His swift hoe wrestled wiry weeds.
He pledged his labor to his needs.

Now he hangs surrender's rule
beside his harp above his bed:
The spirit dreams, but truth is cruel;
alas, the body must be fed.
But he hears other hungers speak...
Which is stronger, which is weak?

He says, "My threads are barely tied
and I could cut these tethers loose.
I wonder why I've never tried.
Is need my reason or excuse?"
He looks across to greener grass
and spreads his hands against the glass.

*

The lame one waits where the roadways cross
and stops the passersby to beg,
not for alms but ears to toss
his offerings to. With shaky leg
and thumping cane and thunder eyes
the voice of the prophet cries:

"Taste the sun, O feeble eyes
who suck the marrow of the moon.
Take nourishment and exercise—
your crucial hour's coming soon.
Under heaven foul winds blow;
above the pit pure waters flow.

"Dare deny your Blessed Be
to hollow princes' rigged defense.
The power of their tyranny
is only your obedience!"
Thrown to fade in a dungeon grim,
the candle of his truth wanes dim.

"My days I measure on my wall
with a blood mark when the bread appears.
Silence answers when I call.
The guards are armed with swords and spears,
their boots wear down as they strut past.
I tap my hands against the glass."

*

The whole town turns its wounds away
from the healer's honest instruments.
If he could cure the pain he'd stay,
but the balm they beg his code prevents.
He hikes as far as the nation's end;
he has no love, no faith, no friend.

There is no answer to his quest.
The earth was mapped before his birth.
Each idea has been expressed
in terms of more substantial worth
than he could fashion from his small
vague understanding of it all.

"What's the use, the work is done.
I've blundered every chance I've met,
abandoned every thread begun
and sewn my wings with feathers wet
from crying over still-born dreams
to my temple shroud with crooked seams.

"The road unfolds before my feet,
each step I make the jungle parts.
I can't tell triumph from defeat,
untroubled minds from broken hearts.
My sorrows cling, my joys pass,
I pound my hands against the glass."

*

On earth there crawls one human breed—
noble, vicious, wise and vain,
compelled by fear and faith and greed
to fashion pleasure, temper pain.
The breath of life is only loaned
and death by breathing just postponed.

Few will ever pull their hooks
or split the knots that seal their nets.
Most will fish their lines from books
and snag the banks, the shallow depths.
While one imagines past the sea,
unfit for his identity.

An angel guised in such a skin
arrives to hide between its bones
from where no code gets tangled in
the course of blood through sticks and stones.
He understands no source is free
from corruption and necessity.

He turns his cheek upon his foes
and keeps his distance from his friends.
At the window, clad in borrowed clothes,
he gazes through illusion's lens
on worlds to come and ages past
with hands fixed now against the glass.

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