The Last of Poets

The Last of Poets

Once in a chapter of my life, when silence was everyone's stranger and
when solitude had been deserted by many for the sake of superficial
merriment and temporary self-gratification, I saw a man whom people,
out of disgust and shallowness, called mad, facing an ancient gray
wall which stood as a monument reflecting the power of man's dignity
and had been erected by the hands, and moistened by the sweat, of the poets
who were ostracized by a society whose soul was lost somewhere between ignorance, shamelessness, and superfluousness.

It was a time when new ideas were no longer born, when melancholia
due to existential dread was ridiculed in the face of laziness and
conformity. It was a time when everything was taken for granted, when
life was no longer seen blossoming in the youthful among people. It
was a time when I found people pale in their business and superfluous
in their sensuousness and orientations.

I saw the viscid countenance of that period of ignorance upon the lonely man's furrowed forehead. To no one's enjoyment, I hearkened unto the silent whispers of the man who, living in the debris of his once shimmering dreams, now appeared crushed and broken, sinking limitlessly in his agony. In his eyes, however, I saw a glimmer of
hope betraying a sense of irony. Somehow, I saw love and understanding
not yet slain by bitter disappointments.

Unto the wall, I heard him utter these words,

O you silent witness of Man's decadence
Where is home for the stray falcon
Who knows not the taste of existing in herds
Whose domain is no longer upon the winds
And whose shelter no longer stands erect in the shades of the distant hills?

How much longer shall I bear your image, O Man?
In seclusion, I have desired the end of all distress and faltering
Yet a carcass, a hideous burden unto life's pristine beauty, has remained
As I continue to drag my will to live on like heavy chains

Is this what has become of you, O Man?
If so, indeed dead is my species!
Slain is Man's hope for liberty before the altars of the gods
Which Man has himself shaped from the driest portion of himself

In the buffeting of his silent sorrow, he closed his eyes and let the murmur of the pricking, cold night breeze divert him for a while from the web of age-long, deeply etched pain. Then, all of a sudden, he laughed as the rain descended from its throne in the heights that equally lacked earthly amusement. Somehow, I could sense that crippling laughter mingling with his inward ailment which, in his youth, had turned him into a lover of his own solitude, above anything else, beyond any obsession.

Thus, after a while, the Shadowless Man in him was awakened as he tasted the perpetual rain, in whose course the man was like a barren desert turning into a valley not devoid of the sun's affection and the seasons' love.

Then I heard him speak with utmost yearning, like a silence-breaking tempest, not in the shade of misery but from within his own silent existence,

Let there be one who knows the secret of the seas and possesses the dignity of the sky, who shall resurrect life within Man by echoing the death of the gods and the idols of this ridiculous world with pride

Let there be one with wings still unfolded, who shall not dwell in the prison of oblivion made by the dead and the rotten for the living and the passionate

Let there be one dear to life's own heart, who, with thunder in his voice, shall proclaim from the highest summit of confidence, life's larger desires for originality

Let there be one with a unique constellation of sentiments, who shall jeer at the superfluous people brimming only with the dead and their values

Let there be one with the greatest thirst for life, whose mad longing for beauty shall quench the dehydrated among people

Let there be one who does not mind incinerating himself in a madness that burns into its own ashes, who shall show the way of beauty, thereby becoming a doorway unto intoxication and a living image of love's fulfillment

Let there be a loner among the superficial, who shall show the world how to kiss the heart of the greater and deeper silence of life whose door is the morning mist, whose truth is kept in the heart of a desecrated mother and her fatherless infant, and whose beloved is the nightingale that, having witnessed life partitioned from life, weaves its nest with its own feathers

Let there be a freeman, a wanderer, among those who have only partially arrived at the essence of freedom and the heart of reason, who shall show that normed political ideals are not reflections of the laws of nature, but walls bounded by a ceiling of selfishness and hypocrisy whose destiny is to crack and crumble under the self-gravity of weighty, measured talks

Let there be a painter among the blind, who shall paint the landscape of existence with his breath and laughter above the clamor of the world and with his blood and tears beneath the feet of death

Let there be a musician among the deaf, who shall not withhold the hidden song that deepens and softens the spirit against that which murders the song-bird within Man

Let there be among the sleepwalkers a prophet whose passion for life shall resurrect dead hearts and whose path to life shall be spanned by his knowledge of intimacy

Let there be among the slumbering and the motionless, a restless wayfarer whose reality is one with the invisible winds that scatter the dust of the earth into deep space to be kissed by the light of the distant stars

Let there be a poet among the insensitive, whose words shall speak unto the ear of their ears, whose wounded heart bears the taste of wine to be remembered by those who are not ashamed of life's nakedness

Let there be one bearing the Truth within himself, who, in his silent knowledge of existence, shall lend his light of understanding to others, thereby returning love that is homesick to its abode

Let there be a true lover of life among the tyrants of the world, who, enfolded in the solitude of the crucified, shall see every human child as a shrine of innocence and beauty, and who shall be capable of falling in love with the most fragile of souls whose days on earth are briefer than the most tender of spring butterflies that lovingly yields its life to the transience of the winds

Let there be among you, O people, a madman who, emerging from the loneliest depths of reality, shall fulfill the desires of the tides of life and drift the others away from the ebbs of humanity

Let there be among you, O cowards, a martyr who shall be killed in his alienation by his own understanding of love in the darkest and most songless hours of the night, whose death shall span the dawn of a new morning, whose song shall be sung by every new-born and the winged among you, and whose heart shall be enthroned upon every heart

Let there be among you, O carcasses, a weightless beauty that shall rise with the dawn from the east, whose radiance shall unveil the face of the night, and whose presence shall be a window of the morning light

Upon saying this, he turned his gaze towards the sky with glistening eyes, motionless. Then he knelt down with certain heaviness, like an exhausted grave digger. I approached him silently, not to greet him with soothing words of sympathy, but to cry with him in his infinite silence. And when his breath had mingled with mine secretly in the darkness of the night, and not like two strangers unto each other, I placed his trembling body in my arms.

Then with a ghostly tenderness and the splendor of a fragile life that did not intimidate the soul, he said unto me, with a smile and a tear,

People only see the misery of an endless winter and the restlessness of insanity's waves in me
But child, I am all right, you see
I love this tempest that burns and bathes my soul more than I love contentment

Thus spoke the last of poets.

(By Dani, 4 November 2007)