The Legacy (Poetry by Bob Racine)

How would a dead and esteemed poet speak to subsequent generations?  I hope the inscription would sound something like this.

In thrall to unwritten time, I the bard do call, speak, enjoin.

Where are you, my children yet to be,

seeds yet to be sown, perhaps yet to walk

on titans’ feet and tread the earth into another shape?

Fear not!  I will be but the frail shadow casting myself

upon the flood of your virgin light.  Commemorate me not! 

I ask not for given honor or celebrity past due. 

I recoil at the thought of fetish chains dangling from vest pockets,

to be grappled like shrunken heads by the fingers of an alien elite,

fed to the glut of esthetes and cultists alike. 

Where in the potpourri of my dated fragments,

where in the scattershot of my obsessions, large and small,

would you search?  Where among you is the memory

to sever the plum by which the bulk of me is construed?

The narrative is gnarled, uneven for want of a scrivener’s finesse. 

Neither reason nor excuse do I afford for the failings of my own

fortitude, or for un-kept promises moldering in pewter cups.

Let me come to you, oh brood of the unborn, in the faintest

of whispers, without the ominous ingress of footsteps. 

My only appeal from the grave:

that my poet’s license not expire

with my yet-to-be-forgotten remains. 

You need only forgive me the errantry of the blind,

and my words have hope to outlive the life in my flesh.

Press your ear against the fissures rending my tomb and listen. 

Mend the tear in my dry moldy parchment; see what my

now parched quill has left in your hands.

I would, to be sure, set some source astir among you,

giving flesh and form where heretofore only precept

has shed a murky light.  Yea, let it flow, let it go its way. 

Unlock its secrets, give it room. 

In thrall to unwritten time, so I the bard,

set apart for a day out of eternity, thusly aspire to

the virgin hereafter of this our ancient earth.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net