Shadow Image

 

This is my life and my fate, my song -
glad harmony of time and purpose,
bound to determine the foundation
upon which truth rests -
sings earth and sky and sea,
colossus of existence,
seen and unseen reality.

Shadow image on the wall;
that's me, yet out in the fresh air,
out in the sunlight I belong.
That's where I want to be,
but these ropes and chains are mine,
of my own making and design.
Their weight is my strong desire
and the burden of memory.

A voice speaks, and I listen,
hoping to understand the question,
requiring of myself only patience
to wait for the answer to be disclosed,
its essence fully and finally revealed.

Ongoing destiny, grace my hearing
with truer words of prophecy.
Human virtue, moral outrage, speaks;
and the whole world trembles,
awakening from a long dream
and a deep sleep.

Herald to a newborn age,
dawn brightly proclaims its promise:
all things re-wrought in the change,
yes, heaven and earth remade.

Stand at tomorrow's threshold,
and look out on a troubled scene -
disturbed by internal decay,
torn by hatred, devoured by greed.

Strike blind these eyes
that have seen no meaning.
Still this loose tongue
that speaks of believing.

The time-device of destruction
runs headlong to detonation.
Twelve billion hands hold fate
arrested for the moment to wait,
abiding now to deliberate
whether to leave be or to devastate
the earth and all the human race.

Look on Mankind's dirty face
and see its present state of grace.
It has no future, nothing stable
on which to build a new tomorrow.
It has nothing much but sorrow.

Poor subject of Aesopian fable,
this tragic tale, many times told,
is only half-heard, half-understood,
as these words ring out
answered only by silence.