Mercedes Webb-Pullman-

Pulling the Temple Down

 

Grapes fruit prolifically,

distended fleshy globes whose seeds

will never quicken.  Air above a desert,

tendrils curl before they fall still

aware of  bitter failure.

Listen: like fowl and fish,

no life can spring from this.

 

We rush away from each other

not waiting to ripen; the flush

of our first bloom frenetic. The inevitable end

falls so softly our minds deny the ugliness

of loss as it touches our lips

brushes by like heavy morning dew.

Cowards who choose a late stand

we tiptoe behind someone else’s mask,

solitary prisoners who follow the queen

in Cuzco’s altar carvings.

 

The god is nothing like before. Quick death

bothers him. Fall means slow extinction;

from the first he knows himself, plays to

that eternal gallery of ever-changing stars.

The wheel turns to our 15 minute fame

then Bau grows morose

and dances us to shadowed pools.

I’ve danced with someone like her.

Wrapped in shining steps, I floated

in slow water.

 

I won’t pretend acceptance;

to be dead, to be old, with everything

behind me. I sit at the feet of my past,

remember Samson, how he lost

everything in the end, and nothing.

Villainous heroes, mountains of arctic ice

monsters that calve in the mind;

love will always betray.

 

Was he really a villain, even to you?

Couldn’t it end there?

But listen –

he let go and gathered them all in,

submitted and died. If you built altars

it was before he imploded blind

on the print of your life, from the frantic cosmos

which judges submission and failure.

As you drove him through the temple

each head that turned tugged him

down and under until, defiant

he leapt to the head of the line.