Verse by Caleb Mannan

If you like Robert Service, Longfellow, Tolkien, Milton, Robinson Jeffers, Whitman, Poe, The Bible, Tennyson, Ray Bradbury, life, death, Untermeyer, Pound, Donne, joy, sorrow, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, children, beauty, Dante, Tom Waits, then set yourself down beside this fire.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

I. Wheat and Wildflowers

One day we will meet
on the other side of the twilight of the gods,
or the gods we thought we were.
We will sit under an ancient pine,
looking out on the wheat and wildflowers
where once was a bloody plane strewn with our brother's bodies.
We will speak in quiet tones in the smoke of our fire,
and never our hearts will tremble.

We will then be mild men in the manner of our father,
our arms unscarred, our minds untroubled.
We will have forgotten the battles and blood,
only a whisper in the wheat.
The sons of god will lay down their threshing tools
to hail us in a greeting:
'It is finished!’

And the beauty of it will bring tears to our eyes.

2 comments:

  1. This is the verse( as we will hence forth call it) that begat this beautiful beast. I have written since I was a kid, and have stacks and stacks of old notebooks filled to the brim, but some how, this distilled what I believe down to a manifesto of sorts. It speaks of life and death, joy and suffering, and ultimately, peace. If there is no after life, I am screwed.

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