You taught me language and we had not talked for a year, and more, won’t now, ever.
Traces, faint, of your twinkling eyes and wide grin, will never die, until I do. Lesser men
grabbed higher thrones as we looked on, I in dismay and you with a smile. I demanded,
wanted; expected more for you, thus more for myself, if the law of proportionality between
intellect and rise held. I discovered that there are more exceptions than proofs of the law.
You have left and I grieve impersonally for a personal tone you’d not approve of, I know.
My song had to be objective, diamond-hard. I’d have detailed those infinite flights,
spanned by those distant bells, but then, you wanted the singer hidden, singing “darkling”
pure strains. “Only the song matters”. I rebelled and wrote “The air I breathe in”.
You didn’t mince words in your short review. “Too subjective and mushy”. I never showed
you my poems after that. You’ll never get to see this one.
Our faiths were similar sometimes, only sometimes. Yet I needed my
“points of departure” and for them, I needed you.
“Create a system or be forever a slave”, you said.
The Satan-poet lived smiling and left with head un-bent.
Did you know what you were doing back then? The old “grammarian”
did not fully know what his disciples did. It takes an eagle’s soaring heights
to take in a glance the stretched land of gold. You liked standing aloof, for you
never belonged to the likes of them and Coriolanus would never let the sheep forget that.
Published in GloMag May 2021.