Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Sun Stroke

1) Blood boils over in the heat of the day,
The noonday toll causes each man to say
I'm tired and I'm hungry and want some sleep;
Such rest from weariness from the heats deep
Would cover men over with a potion
That if applied, much like tender lotion,
To the body, would cause them bitter pain
Ere they waked from such a sleep. For the knave
Takes those that do peak at midday, and grave
Is his face when he comes to collect them;
He is not sister death. Such cold embers,
As do litter the fire in the night watch,
Are these men that fall to sleep and botch...

2) Yet how is noonday to be cursed for this
Strange dire? unwholesome phenomenon?
Shadow of despair? Were men not aware
That for them is the morn set forth? to care
For themselves as they may before the sun's
Cascading rays do besiege them? as one
Giant that gathers in his hands Mount Pain
And throws it over his own gentle Thaine?
Many men do wish for this end at noon
Before the gentle breeze of the east swoon!
But how, I ask you how again, is this
Sun, our son, who's going we may remiss
At the end of day, culpable of death
That happened under his watch, heats great breath?

3) But none do think to blame themselves, give fault
Where it is due. To do so would be assault
Upon the very self we embody!
Do we turn traitor to self, enemy?
Does the moon seek to overthrow the light
That holds ever and a moment more, fight
With he whom she will forever adore?
Though we reason rightly little we grasp;
For reason see's no holes in the sail mast
When it is guided by fair wants and hopes,
Clings to expectation and tries to rope
Reason as though it were a wild beast
To be tamed and then killed, as for a feast!
So what is due men do not, they abhor.

4) How to tell them of their own calumny,
To free reason! and set them in turn free!
But reason now is like a beast most fey
That turns upon it's master in the day
For fear that it shall receive some new shock,
Pain, worse than loosing the key to the lock.
Tis a great pity, for if I look close
At the strapped beast inside the iron cage,
By iron pegs that hold back his free cose,
That hold back his head, his onslaught of rage,
I think I espy in his eyes my friend;
Can it be that he did in fact intend
To divorce reason as a marriage bed
That was lost because of something he read? 

5) But a veil is placed over my eyesight
And I cannot see anymore the plight
Of reason; the beast within iron cage.
I cannot tell where I'm going, no sage
Could help me to understand the dark path
That I suddenly found, the aftermath
Of my queries and questions concerning
The beast of reason and all his yearnings.
Yet I have not fallen as my friend did,
I have not! Though even now sight is hid
From me and I know not where I go I
Will not give in to the troubles of woe
That did beset my friend's mind; yet I try
In vein to overcome what I did sow...

6) How easy it is to be overcome
By the rays of heat from the rising sun.
How easy it is to lay down and die,
To go no further to not even try.
Walking now in a cloud, a vision made
Within my own mind, of love, heaven's glade,
I sense I am at peace; though at disease
Is my heart while my still sight doth still please.
Yet as I look upon this paradise 
Of man made heaven, which is very nice,
I cannot help but look to my sense;
Then a chill runs down my own defenses.
For my hands now feel the bite of iron,
Paradise withers into a dry fern...   

7) So have I fallen into the same trap
That fell upon my friend in his day nap.
So has my mind encountered great treason
While I searched in vein for my friends reason.
I sought to know why it was that a cage
Did suit my friend, who was once a great sage.
Now my blood is boiled over from the sun,
For the cage is not shaded, on the run
Are the shadows of trees from this dry space;
They leave me in my cage to turn and pace.
Here then is my question, my own riddle,
What causes the great break in the fiddle?
And the answer is this, not enough time
For fiddle to rest. It turned on a dime.

8) Boiling over as the day goes bye bye
I look to see the evening sailing by.
Afternoon has left us in dusty heat,
Now the stint of daylight leaves us all beat.
My friend and I, both beasts, our reason gone,
Have not a care, our worries but a fawn
In comparison to a great castle;
Why should we worry? Why should we hassle?
For the poisonous fumes of yellow sun
In the heat of the day causes to run
Not only the shadows, but our minds too,
Without them what can we two even do?
Thus trapped in a cage the evening blooms,
Has left us without hope in desert dunes. 

9) When the day is young and all is but hope
That life may live free and merrily be,
I thought not at all, did not labor, nope!
I was free! A free jolly mountain goat
That climbs high into the thrush above the
Ever stretching green meadows bellow me.
A roving sea of green grass and clovers.
Yet when the sun came on strong, as does wind
Driven by a master it cannot see
But obeys it every day willingly,
Then did my hope turn to doubt; for I had
Not reserved my strength. No more am I lad
Of the spring, but failed has my small lithe frame;
These, my own desires, I did not tame.

                          The Sun Stroke, (c) Luke Bennette, May 2012

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