Pillar

They hurried into my house one night

And barred the door behind them

They told me to pack nothing

Leave behind all that I had

All that I had accumulated

My medals and my trophies,

My loves and my lies.

 

Earnestly they exhorted me;

They said we had but half a second

So we must make double time -

In that land I was a young king

Yet we would strike out for a land

Where I’d be a man of no importance -

They told me not to seek

Great things for myself,

But everywhere I went

My life would be a prize unto me.

 

So up we rose, in the dead of night

While my neighbours beat down the door

Struck with a blindness

Like that of the darkest night;

They said, “Bring your two guests out to us -

Your Conscience and your Reason -

Bring them out that we may defile them.”

I said, “I have two fair daughters instead,

My Pride and my Vanity,

Let me bring them out instead,

That you may do to them as you will -”

But they would hear none of it.

 

Away we fled, and just in time

For I could hear a crashing -

A moaning and a gnashing;

The searing and the roaring

Of a most intense inferno

Beating upon my back -

But my two guides

Solemnly warned me

Not to look behind,

But to press on to my deliverance.

 

But something stirred within me -

An inexorable longing,

An overpowering impulse…

A something that compelled me, that impelled me

To sneak a peek

At what had become of my past -

That life that was so doomed,

That wharf in which I would go moor a

Sinking, sickness-ridden ship -

You see, I had left behind

All my depravations

Those unsavoury relations,

All those incorrigible friends

Who I had loved so well…

 

And now I stand, a Pillar;

A signpost and a warning

A byword, a parable

Caught forever in my turning.

Frozen for all time

At the border between back and forth

Feet facing forward,

Neck twisted back

Never moving onward,

So there’ll never be a Past

Staring at what I was,

Unable to be who I am

Or become who I must be;

Take all my promises to change

With a large pinch of salt;

Soon the fiery rain will come

And melt me all away...

 

And such is my lot…