FROM COPTIC LIGHT
- Ted Pearson (U.S.A.)
1.
The irises came up early that year. Those
with shelter ventured out. The mad were lost in the silence of others whose
faith in reason was plagued by doubt. No madder than most, you chose to roam. But, as the sun rose higher each day, your
thoughts kept turning home. Despair pervaded a somber palette of desolated
shades. These, in turn, became wards of the streets and languished where once
they had played.
2.
Imagine a new world rendered by time into
nothing fit for the old. From whence you wandered through an arid waste where the
wind waxed hot and cold. Your quest began with a Sibylline dare. And while each
day ended in time for the next, reversals of fortune were common fare.
Self-possession became an obsession. As did your taste for the angel’s share.
You pledged yourself to your gods and your dreams, but in fact you owed them
nothing.
3.
We interrupt work on this his tomb to attend
to the demiurge. Nothing lasts forever. Such were his final words.
The afterlife itself depends on the legions
of faithful departed. Those whose bare lives illustrate how the myth of heaven started.
Thus are forged the lies that bind, which raises the problem of other minds.
And, though our words bespeak our resistance, we’re no less other to ourselves
and no less prone to inexistence.
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