Sunday, November 11, 2018

The Pointing


In some aerie a fabled library soars;
On its myriad scrolls each truth is told,
The secrets behind all hidden doors,
Knowledge dearer than mountains of gold;
Intricate curves and dots and lines
Conspire to trap the facts as signs.
So dreams the world-weary sage,
Wasting his best years with books;
The farce playing out on stage
Pales next to ink on yellowed page.
He points to the exit and a dog looks
But sees no ghostly cue in the hand;
Staring dumbly the beast sits still,
The gesture lost like a pebble in sand.
None follows too the inky trail of his quill:
Preferring trendy charades, the thinker’s ignored;
He haunts the town below like a wraith;
Only the deaf and blind are adored
Who know nothing but keep the faith.
To deathless atoms learning’s a sideshow,
A gilded map to nowhere,
Pointless as a severed big toe.
When he awakens to the nightmare
He sets the sorted scrolls ablaze,
The rising smoke offending no one;
His protest fades like a guru in a maze
Who finds no welcome or escape:
Until exhausted he may run
Before collapsing in a daze,
Dying as one with the landscape.



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