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DESTINY
By Quentin Smith
Destiny, what do you want from me?
I have followed you unswerving,
Past the inviolable boundaries
Into claustral nights and days
Of a sepulchral solitude.
I have patiently waited through naphtha winters
And summers whose purpose was the maturing of rust.
Despite my chairs’ occasional vibrations,
I have reclined in stillness
In a thousand silenced rooms
without light. I sat heeding you,
listening for a call,
the call of destiny that would bid me to follow it
to the unreachable horizon,
where I would stand gazing
on the bright eternities in the distance,
and their glowing kingdoms of inspiration
I was to conquer.
Lead me beyond your horizon
my eyes gorged with your light,
To the crimson mountains of books
Of alethic philosophy I would climb.
Lead me to the vellum pages of poems
A new, triumphal pen would traverse.
Lead me to the white oceans of canvas
My carefully trembling brushes
Would slowly drain
with incandescent buckets of
chameleon paint.
But destiny! I have felt nothing
From you. I once moved my hand
Through a seraphic darkness
And then an archaic wind,
But I gripped nothing.
Your absence is like the aftermath
Of a total evacuation: empty houses,
Darkened windows; the velveteen vines
Climb through the moonlight, with no pretence
Of being superintended.
Your disappearance
Has rendered life a total blackout
That no one has ordered. You have
Made me a gourmand of mausoleums
For the living.
And then you finally abandoned me
As a marble statue
In a massive, labyrinth of iron.
Destiny, if only you would appear,
even if only instantaneously,
as a half-silvered image
Passing a shattered lens. Please lend me
The energy of your hidden purpose.
Or have I looked in the wrong direction
From the beginning? Maybe life is backwards.
Maybe,
Just maybe,
It is not you for whom I wait,
But the possible energy of kinetic form
I saw when once, by perchance, I glanced
Straight into the mirror.
Written 1972 and 2002. |