His Majesty in the Dark

It takes a while to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.

My body in chains in your dark prison

Might suffer the pain of this captivity

If no light shone at the end

of your blackened corridor.

But since it does,

I can be the king of the paleolithic-

Ruler of rocks and nearly-realized men.

I can fall from this precipice,

Bounce my whole self against the waiting stones below

And live to see another day

Under light shafts through highest windows.

Your shade might shame the sun.

When that darkening aspect

Reels and spins, coaxes and cajoles

me into the abyss and I sink,

sink,

sink

like a boulder in a tarpit:

so slow.