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Arkhegetes
As I am to die,
And between but a pinch of thy two
fingers it is my honor to have been a man,
This night as each night, and at this
moment when, half-round the arc of the Earth,
The plum light of dawn just now breaks
above Delphi;
This night, too, I stand as much at
attention as at prayer,
I stand in thanks to you,
Apollo of the piercing light,
Apollo who watches through the
watchfulness of the crows,
I stand to thank you for those tools by
which a mere man may come to his portion of
dignity.
I drink my share while turning again to
write, and by three I see my pages,
watch the black ink dry
ash-black.
This is a moment. As my life is a moment.
If
It is to be a moment held in suspense
till my body crumbles with age,
It is still but a moment in your
sight.
I look over America, laden with
gifts.
Las Vegas glistens in this hollow along
the broad Mojave, hard and bright with promise.
And yet it was not product of your
particular action,
But of things underneath, laid by your
hand, a pattern beneath the innumerable actions of
innumerable selves,
Mortal selves, myself;
And among these actions, Las
Vegas,
Which, no less than
Washington,
was first an image dazzling one man's
eyes. As I am to die,
I thank you for this gift of pattern, by
which dead men might sing to the unborn.
It is no bad thing if the dead be only
dead, that there might be such song.
II.
I think the first of us to know you had
seen his people
Dragged off, one by one, by the
cats.
The old, granted,
But no child is safe.
He is simian with hunger,
with.
No thought of When my child is
grown,
None of things passed down.
His hands are empty.
With kinsmen, he can sometimes bring down
meat
But there is no long standing by the
meat
Before the cats arrive,
Walking proud across the land, big as
small bulls.
To him, Apollo whispers
principles
By which to slay the cats.
And He is in the grace of gesture, a
grace hard won,
Not to shatter a flint, but to shave it
fine.
III.
We walked the grass two hundred thousand
years before the city rose.
At least at night, if the fire was high
and red,
We might conspire upon things not tight
round the corner,
But, as if whispering, upon things round
the corner still after.
Over generations we chipped words bright
alongside our arrowheads.
Within us, the new faith. That we are not
animals.
And at daybreak, the Sun shone as though
for us alone. It was we,
Among creatures, who best exploited the
open daylight, with its long sightlines: We,
Who with Sunrise switched sides from game
to hunter.
There were no places then toward which
one might walk,
And so we reckoned our walking
aimless.
Worker from afar,
How could we, yet unshorn, have perceived
your working?-
-that we had become citizens.
Each time three men gathered upon a
lion,
There, as mysterium, the city.
It was you who knew where the stone gate
would rise above the grass.
Here, behind cut stone, to have one's
name.
When this tissue falters and can expel no
life, I have had my name.
I will not slip off into nullity. Like an
animal.
Though I am waste in a plot of earth,
even that earth will be stamped mine.
IV.
Once only you knew the number of the
stars.
Ie Paian! Now we know, too.
Easy, in a poem, to bemoan the
day.
We needed a goodness to build this
place,
And we needed sins.
I have been overland,
Washington to Los Angeles, pacing back
and forth,
And I want more.
I revel in the power of my
nation,
And I want more.
Rain, Thargelios,
You who cup an ocean in one
palm.
Spread wide your fingers,
Leave us clean for the new
work.
Cool wet beads in my eyebrows,
I will reopen my eyes to
Night.
As for the first time, I will look upon
the Moon.
I will witness that its shine is not its
own,
But is the radiant shadow of the
Sun.
I will witness that standing here I whirl
about the Sun,
As does this mighty planet beneath my
feet.
I will witness. That this Earth is
exactly a planet,
And I exactly man.
I will witness. That we are strong
together,
We, who each of us is to die.
We brandish a starfield all our
own
Back upon the starry Night.
I whistle round the Sun,
And all else that whistles round the
Sun
Will be land for our walking,
Even to the far places, to the clouds of
ice and stone.
Rain, Thargelios.
Blast loose the angry fingers of the
dead
That would clutch our feet.
Again, set the clock to zero for our
walking.
.
In Your Honor. Todd Jackson
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