Seekers of the Stars...A Poem

 

 

Some few emerge from the sacred flame,

move beyond groping cave grunters

to arch their necks in nightward gaze

at the chance-strewn glitter high above.

What are they, these stars, to near apes?

How do hairy hearts and icy stars

combine to sing the siren song

of primeval divinity,

the first faint stirring of some thing

beyond belly-hunger, throat-thirst,

the lust of hunt and war,

the flame in the gonads?

 

Through cool desert dark, timeless tread

purple silhouettes humped foot to padded foot

with warm-sand, blue-shadow brethren,

etched by the diamond-brilliant,

star-drilled Arabian night.

Steaming dung and ruptured sand

mark their way...herdsman,

camel driver, lover,

poet, astronomer...

impaled by the stars'

unrelenting daggers of eon-thrusting light

withdrawn again through each star source

to pierce the utter core of eternity

and the fiery heart of God.

 

Before the temple built on holy mount,

before the voice of gods in sacred groves,

before philosophy, philosophy...

there was the sea, the stars and silent Greeks

to pattern random particles of light

after robust constructions of myth,

the sun and shadow of the Aegean soul.

Perseus eternally saves sweet Andromeda

from the leviathan beneath the waves;

vast Hercules thwarts the timeless

advance of monstrous Draco;

the great square of Pegasus forever soars

through velvet fields of night.

 

I think the stars shone brighter then

when blood still coursed through veins

of ancient Arab, ape and Greek.

 

Copyright by Don Gray