Page 54 - flying stones

the sculptor’s song

my life is ending. There’s no pretending now,

and anyway, I don’t know how to make believe.
I am defenseless, and I am senseless

with exhaustion: with impossible questions.

my life is lived in stone. each moment

I am alone with desire, my hammer

strikes heart’s anvil, sparking the hope
and fire of creation. how real is it?

what is the feel of it, this mica skin?

each day whittles away the memory

of child’s play, pig-tail love,

crow’s cawing, sea-sawing struggles
to eat, to sleep, to breathe beneath

the swinging blade of hunger and

poverty’s power; this relentless turning of page.

I am a man. I figure marble riddles.
my soul is caged against its will.

and yours? war and ignorance rage,

maim and kill friends and strangers alike.
people starve: how do I carve such suffering?

though we are pitted one against the other,
I choose not to smother another’s life

to make mine safe. I will not yield to fear
or grief, for country, for gold, for zealous belief.

Life is wasting me, but I am stone and stand my place.