Things Could Be Worse
We were roped each to each and led
single file to watch Caliph Hisham’s dug-up corpse
get scourged while a cruel sun ate our necks
and shoulders. Yet it was a day off from blinding
stone dust and stinging lashes at the quarry.
Less lucky ones, after all, pulled away their short lives
in the galleys, up to their ankles in bilge sewage.
Still, imminent death released them into paradise,
albeit cindery slave quarters in that place.
Remember how bored and peevish our masters
looked, lounging in gilded palanquins under the shade
of brocade parasols? Rather than just sullenly watch
Hisham fly up into yellow air as dusty scraps,
we began to discuss the nature of beauty: are things
made beautiful when gods love them, or do gods
in their infinite taste just love beautiful stuff?
It was our Thespis who always stood and spoke apart
from our keening voices who said thus: Surely,
the gods, who must live eternally amidst beauty,
must grow petulant in the dazzle of its glitter.
So where then is truth? And so in silence
behind our masks we watched a man’s bones
clatter to a heap of nothing, though we heard still
the rhythm of the whip in a zither’s strum.
It was not always so and would not always be
so. Once as naked babes we lay in ticking straw
waving like upturned turtles our small arms
and legs at the evening sky, our tiny paws
grasping for a silver star, our twinkling toy
we gurgled in delight for. We shake our beards
and smile ruefully to remember us then,
yet a fading glimmer in our dying eyes
will again be reaching for that gaudy bauble.
single file to watch Caliph Hisham’s dug-up corpse
get scourged while a cruel sun ate our necks
and shoulders. Yet it was a day off from blinding
stone dust and stinging lashes at the quarry.
Less lucky ones, after all, pulled away their short lives
in the galleys, up to their ankles in bilge sewage.
Still, imminent death released them into paradise,
albeit cindery slave quarters in that place.
Remember how bored and peevish our masters
looked, lounging in gilded palanquins under the shade
of brocade parasols? Rather than just sullenly watch
Hisham fly up into yellow air as dusty scraps,
we began to discuss the nature of beauty: are things
made beautiful when gods love them, or do gods
in their infinite taste just love beautiful stuff?
It was our Thespis who always stood and spoke apart
from our keening voices who said thus: Surely,
the gods, who must live eternally amidst beauty,
must grow petulant in the dazzle of its glitter.
So where then is truth? And so in silence
behind our masks we watched a man’s bones
clatter to a heap of nothing, though we heard still
the rhythm of the whip in a zither’s strum.
It was not always so and would not always be
so. Once as naked babes we lay in ticking straw
waving like upturned turtles our small arms
and legs at the evening sky, our tiny paws
grasping for a silver star, our twinkling toy
we gurgled in delight for. We shake our beards
and smile ruefully to remember us then,
yet a fading glimmer in our dying eyes
will again be reaching for that gaudy bauble.
