Statue

Statue

A whisper of his life within the stone
emerges from the cold of retrospect,
that he behind the figure's vacant stare
could know that other hands saw history
within the reach his fingers stretched, could throw
his burning soul across millenia
and we are there attuned, somehow, to catch
a shred of wisdom, borne upon a gray
and crumbling art.

And do not look apart just yet, for there
is mystery within the telegraph
of ages left to us that may not foil
romance, but prey upon the dying age
that we, ourselves encapsulate in time
to shun mortality.

It is a voice we may not like so much,
unable to attain vitality
that seizes the imagination as
a Praxiteles did, a voice for us
that we may not let go, though photos fall
aside, for this was life incarnate in
the stuff of earth, a transient man come down
to breathe upon us as before.

How still he is! How firm his stubborn grasp
of all we are—how lost are we outside
this quarried slab to meet a personage
that we already knew within ourselves
and fear to know again, lest life and death
in harmony may speak aloud before
we run away.
~