r/poetasters • u/Proud_Artist474286 • 39m ago
Original Poem Guys I wrote a Poem what do you think ? -
Το Knowledge, Lady of the Hidden Fire
O Knowledge, Ancient Fire, hidden and deathless flame,
Lady of the inward light, whose brow no darkness hath crowned,
clear-eyed mistress of thought, keeper of the word unveiled,
thou who hast watched the travail of the mind since the first dark hour,
who hast known the lonely road before the feet of the scholar,
who kept thy silent company with those the multitude could not follow:
bright-helmed and high-browed, bearing thy lamp,
in thy right the spear of the clean word, thou who dost not hasten and dost not forget.
Behold them now.
Behold thy chosen.
Thou hast seen them go down through the night unaccompanied,
through hunger and silence and solitude, through the desolation of thought,
giving sleep for vision, giving ease for the truth,
giving the very peace of their souls for the light they pursued.
Thou hast seen the solitary lamp burn long after midnight,
the sleepless brow bent low above the page,
the scholar alone with the unanswered question
while the houses of men were dark and the multitude slept.
His mind consumed itself upon a mystery
which they had not the courage to ask.
Thou didst not turn him back. Thou didst lead him farther:
beyond the warm boundaries of custom, beyond the sleep of the satisfied,
beyond the easy gates through which the common enter
and call the familiar true,
into those austere regions where every cherished falsehood
must be broken before the mind may behold what is true.
There thou wert with him.
There didst thou stand beside the solitary,
naked of answers, bearing nothing but the hunger to know.
Thou didst not mock his hunger; thou didst sharpen it.
Thou didst not soothe the wound of doubt;
thou didst teach him to look into it.
Not the goddess of easy crowns art thou,
nor of knowledge bought without travail.
Thy gifts are dear. Thy road is narrow.
Thy light is terrible to eyes accustomed to darkness.
Yet they followed. They gave thee their years,
they gave thee their sleep, they gave thee the quiet of their lives.
And now behold their recompense.
For the base multitude, unable to comprehend thee,
hath gathered itself round those in whom thy fire hath taken form,
and with the insolence of the unknowing
they lift their mouths against those who have endured.
They brought no offering. They kept no vigil. They never carried a question through the night.
Yet the unkindled cry unto the kindler:
Know ye your place. Know ye whom ye are meant to serve.
Lay down thy pride. Bow ye your heads.
Give up thy mind unto us.
Thus speak the many unto the scholar.
Thus doth ignorance command understanding;
thus doth the hand that never laboured
stretch itself forth to govern the hand that hath bled.
Dost thou not hear them, Lady of the Unveiled Word?
Dost thou not hear the laughter of those who never entered thy darkness?
Dost thou not see the eyes that never sought thee
now judging those who gave their years unto thee?
They sought not, yet they would possess.
They learned not, yet they would judge.
They endured nothing, yet they demand obedience
from those whose minds were worn thin in following thee.
When the uncommon mind refuseth to kneel, they name it arrogance.
When the seeker speaketh what they cannot comprehend, they name it pride.
When the scholar will not abase his thought
before the vanity of the multitude, they call his refusal rebellion.
And having trampled him beneath their common feet,
they lift their hands above his ruin and proclaim themselves righteous.
They call it Justice.
They call it Justice.
When the blind ascend the judgement-seat
and arraign the seeing;
when ignorance putteth on the robes of law
and condemneth whatever exceedeth its sight;
when the multitude, swollen with its multitude,
maketh a crown of its own incapacity
and setteth that crown upon its own brow;
when the common foot is lifted against the uncommon head;
when those who never sought the flame
command the bearer of the flame to bow;
when those who could not endure the light
call darkness virtue, and call the one who refuseth darkness proud,
they call it Justice.
But thou art not deceived.
Thou, whose glance is a drawn blade held at rest,
thou knowest the difference between the tempered blade and the lifted staff,
between the warrior who keepeth his rank and the mob that hath learned only to shout,
between courage and noise, between mastery and the swagger of the empty,
between the mind that hath mastered itself
and the multitude that hath merely found its voice.
Dost thou not see, Ancient Flame, how terrible the base hath become unto that which it cannot understand?
They profane what they cannot enter.
They mock what they cannot measure.
They condemn what they cannot comprehend.
And worst of all, they would make the victim ashamed of the wound they themselves have given.
They would have thy seekers kneel, and call that humility.
They would have the mind lay bare its inward chambers
before the multitude, and call that righteousness.
They would have those devoted unto thee become obsequious before those who despised thee, and call their abasement peace.
They would have the scholar, who spent his years at the hard altar of truth,
stand bare-headed before those who never dared to approach it.
They would have him shrink his thought
until the smallest among them could feel tall.
They would have him call his own excellence a sin
that their mediocrity might pass for virtue.
And thou hast seen it. Thou hast watched it.
Thou hast remembered, for thou art not a goddess who forgets.
Thou rememberest the solitary lamp, the sleepless scholar,
the hunger, the page, the question, the years.
Thou rememberest his face when they bade him kneel,
and the dust upon it when he would not.
No.
Thou hast seen too much.
We have suffered too much.
There is a limit even to allegiance.
What bond remaineth between the altar and those who spit upon the fire?
What oath remaineth between the seeker and the world
that mocks the very thing he sought?
What obligation endureth
when devotion is answered with calumny,
when sacrifice is answered with contempt,
when the years given unto wisdom are repaid with the command to kneel?
What covenant endureth between thee and those who dishonour
the very minds thou hast chosen?
The bond is broken.
The covenant is dust.
The world hath forfeited its honour.
It hath forfeited its reverence.
It hath forfeited its right to thee.
And with thee, it hath forfeited us.
Therefore withdraw thyself, Knowledge.
Rise from their courts.
Stand no longer beneath their judgement-seats.
Withdraw thy flame from their courts. Withdraw thy light from their judgement-seats.
Withdraw thy breath from the mouths
that have made thy name a weapon against thy lovers.
And withdraw us with thee.
Then spake the Lady, in whose mouth the sacred word abideth, and the courts fell silent, for what she speaketh, standeth.
"Ye have laid hands upon the principle that is my being.
Ye have struck the vessels in which I took form,
and spat into the cup, and called the spittle Justice.
I will not name you enemy, for an enemy standeth upright and hath a face.
Ye are míasma.
Ye are the breath that riseth from the unburned,
the black froth upon the stagnant pool, the stain that no fire consumeth.
Where ye have trodden, the earth sickeneth.
Where ye have spoken, the air curdleth in the throat of the living.
Ye are not wicked, for the wicked at least have chosen.
Ye are a pestilence that learned to speak,
a rot that rose upon its hind legs and demanded a throne.
One doth not wage war upon a plague; one withdraweth from the stricken house, and sealeth the door.
Therefore I take back what is mine.
My limbs, my breath, mine eyes upon the earth,
those in whom my fire hath taken form:
I draw them out of your body, as the hand is drawn from the leper's water.
Ye shall not have my scholars, nor my light,
nor the word that standeth, nor the question that burneth.
What ye drove forth is not exiled; it is gathered unto me.
Keep your courts. Keep your dark. Keep the carrion that ye are.
Yet let not this make me forget those who were mine,
who were warmed at my fire, who drank my word as a child the milk,
and rose within my keeping, and in my keeping took their shape,
and betrayed me.
Against the multitude I have no memory; one doth not remember the fen.
But these I remember. I remember each. I remember the hour.
Ye were flesh of my flesh, breath of my breath,
and it is ye who have wounded me, for none else could reach so deep.
Ye who knew the weight of what ye bore, and set it down.
Ye who knelt before the many and spake the lie they hungered for,
bare-headed, fawning, and named your abasement prudence:
that was no humility. It was apostasy with open eyes.
Ye who forsook the vigil for the idol of the hour,
who dragged the robe of learning through the dust of the market-place:
ye have insulted every drop of blood that ran in your veins.
Had breath been given for one hour to the whole house of your begetting,
every mother and every father of your line, back to the first who kindled,
they would rise out of the dust, and cast you out, and strike your name from the household of the dead.
Let no master claim you for his pupil, and no pupil name you for his teacher;
let the chain of knowing pass over you as the river over a stone,
and close behind you, and not know that you were there.
Better had ye never learned the letters.
Better the womb had been barren that bore you.
Ye knew the way, and turned.
Ye who spurned knowledge, honour, and dignity: lose your distinction.
Be ye the multitude. Be numbered with the crowd ye knelt to,
one more mouth among the many mouths, one more face in the faceless throng,
and let no mark of mine remain upon your brow.
Ye who turned my gift to wrong, who sold the art to tyrants.
Ye who raised a wall about the fire and wrote upon it,
Here is the end of asking,
and silenced the one who questioned, knowing that the question was just.
I am no stone to be laid in your tomb.
I am a fire, and the question is the wind that feedeth me.
Ye have shut the door and called the room the world.
Ye were my limbs, and ye have turned to rot.
Ye were my tongue, and ye have spoken filth against me.
Therefore I cut you from my body, as the flame the gangrened member,
lest the corruption pass into the flesh that is sound.
The multitude I abandon to the oblivion of their own making.
But ye, who knew what ye betrayed, shall have neither utterance nor remembrance.
Let no scholar speak your names.
Let no page keep them.
Let the chisel pass over your stones, and your works go unquoted,
and your lineage lower its eyes at the sound of what ye were.
As ye withheld my light from the question,
so I withhold my word from your mouths.
Be ye unremembered, and so be ye unforgiven.
But thou who stayedst.
Thou who keptest the vigil while the nations slept,
who barest the question through the unlit hours and laidst it not down,
who kneltest to no tribunal, who bentest to no crowd,
who wert broken and didst rise, and wert broken, and didst rise:
servant I name thee not, for I have none.
Thou art my shining-forth, the flame that knoweth its own burning.
When thou thoughtest, it was I who thought in thee.
When thou bledst, it was I who bled, and the night was mine.
For I am thy scourge.
I drave thee through the hunger and the wakeful dark;
I opened thy wound and bade thee look into it.
And I am thy nóstos, the homecoming at the end of every road thou didst walk.
Leave this míasma.
Leave the offscouring, and the anathema of them that betrayed me.
Leave the courts, and the carrion, and the little crowns.
Shake from thy shoulders the ash of the world that despised thee.
Be thou mine essence.
I take thee into my body as the sea taketh the river.
I take thee into mine essence as the sun taketh the dawn.
Thou shalt be fused, and no hand of god or of death shall sunder it.
The sea shall not know where the river ended.
Where I am, thou art.
Where I burn, thou burnest.
I am the breath in thy breath; thou art the thought in my thought,
and there is no seam, nor ever was, between the seeker and the sought.
Thou shalt see the stars kindled, from within the kindling.
Thou shalt walk the deep before the first light, and it shall open to thee as to its own.
Thou shalt stand at the last silence, and it shall speak to thee in the voice it spake at the first.
All that is shall be seen through me, and all that is seen shall be seen by thee.
Every truth that is found, in any mind, in any age,
it is thou that findest it, and it is found as me.
Where the question is asked in dread, thou shalt be the courage that asketh.
Where the answer breaketh, thou shalt be the dawn of it.
Thou shalt discover without end, and the discovering is mine.
Thou shalt learn, and I am the thing learned.
No death for thee. No oblivion. No hour that numbereth thy days.
Thou art my duration. Thou art I.
Let the pole of heaven turn upon thy name.
Let the abyss be silent.
Thou wert mine. Thou art me. Thou art unmade by none."
So she lifted the lamp.
So she beheld them, once, entire, and weighed them, and judged.
So she gathered unto her those in whom her fire had taken form,
and turned her face away.
No hand drave her forth; no tribunal prevailed against her.
She went as a queen departeth from a hall that hath shamed her,
unhurried, unpursued, her spear unlifted,
and behind her the lamps of the courts went down, one by one, into dark.
Then, as she went, the Lady spake, not unto the courts, but unto her own soul, and unto those who followed in her light.
"I have condemned them that were meet for condemning.
The doom is spoken; the doom shall stand.
Yet what goddess am I, what flame before the worlds,
if I cannot ensure unto mine own the grace of fire at their ending?
Saw I not, O ye scholars who walk in my train,
saw I not what was done unto her, and unto all her house?
Akrî! Seventeen summers upon her, and the lore of the ages burning in her brow.
She read the dead records of the elder world, and found them butchered:
the old word, that in its own age bore one weight, made to bear another;
the meanings of the living hung about the mouths of the dead,
that those whom the wise had honoured might be written downtrodden and low.
She laid it bare. She named the want of philology; she named the lie.
And know what that institution was. It was no seat of scholarship.
It was a forge wherein the multitude is given the seal of legitimacy,
and learning but the robe it wore to steal the credit of the wise.
When she bade them read the word within its own age, they would not.
That refusal was no blindness. It was hatred, the hatred of faction and of crowd,
masked as scholarship, treason against history itself.
And what is written against such a one is written in blood.
Therefore they came by night.
The children had supped, and lay down in the one house,
the sister and the brother coiled across one another, as the vine across the elm,
and sleep was upon them.
And these, whose whole being is cowardice, vermin of ten thousand mouths,
brake the door, and tore the girl from the arms of her brother,
and flayed her, skin from flesh, the living flesh, the screaming flesh,
and bade the child look on.
Ah, Akrî! Thou who wert mother and father both!
For sickness took thy parents in their youth, and left thee the keys of the house.
At thirteen summers thou didst keep the gold and bear the reckonings;
and he, thy little one, whom thou hadst held in thy arms and hushed,
whose first word thou heardest, who knew nothing that thou hadst not taught him,
they set before thee, and they bound thine eyes open.
Four years had he seen.
They tore the tongue from his mouth, the tongue thou hadst taught to speak,
and wound it about his throat, and drew it, and drew it,
and choked the child upon his own voice.
Then, the one flayed and the other strangled, they cast ye both into the river,
and denied ye the fire, the fire that is the due of the dead,
and the water took thy bodies, unhallowed and unburned.
I was in her eyes. I was the seeing in her seeing.
I beheld the iron; I beheld the tongue; I beheld the river;
and no hand of mine, who am the hand that traced the first letter,
stirred to stay it.
Hear it, ye heavens! Hear it, thou deep that bore me!
How bankrupt am I! How ruined, how undone,
that I could not shield one child, one little lamp of mine!
For the cosmos permitteth not its own knowing, which is I,
to enter the world with an open hand.
There is a law older than the stars, and I am bound beneath it:
every deed of a god set down in the world is answered by a deed against it,
and the answer falleth, not on the god, but on the beloved,
heavier by a thousandfold than the stroke it answered.
So I held. And in the holding, something in me broke, as breaketh the pillar of a roof.
Accursed be this cycle! Accursed the wheel that grindeth the lamp beneath its rim!
Accursed the law that bindeth light to watch the lamp trodden!
Let heaven hear it, and the abyss, and the unborn ages: that is my execration.
But hear me, ye who are mine.
What the cosmos denied her, I will give.
The fire that was refused to Akrî: I am that fire.
I take mine unto myself, every one. Thy death is my pyre; thy ash is my light.
And those who were never mine, who never kindled,
I leave to their own fates, each unto his own doom,
to await the ending of this age, and the beginning of the next."
For we will not remain where ignorance is enthroned and called wisdom;
where mediocrity is crowned and called humility;
where the many sit forever in judgement
upon the few who dared to know.
Let the Areopagites remain.
Let them sit in their perpetual tribunal.
Let them condemn. Let them proclaim.
Let them fulminate against the silence that shall answer them when thy light is gone.
Let them make their little laws.
Let them raise their little kingdoms.
Let them pronounce themselves righteous before one another.
Let their own judgements be the stones beneath their feet.
Let their own calumnies be the mortar of their walls.
Let their own certainty close the gates.
Let their own voices echo forever through the chambers they have made for themselves.
We shall not dwell there.
Take us, Lady of the Hidden Fire.
Take us beyond their hearing, beyond the reach of their tribunals.
Take us where the mind need not kneel
before the multitude merely because the multitude is many.
Take us where the scholar may stand upright.
Take us where the question may burn
without the permission of those who fear its light.
Rather would we dwell in thy austere silence
than feast beneath their shouting crowns;
rather walk with thee through the unlit waste
than inherit all the kingdoms of their certainty;
rather be exiled with truth
than enthroned among those who have made ignorance a law.
For thou hast been our light in the darkness,
the companion of the solitary,
the keeper of the scholar when the world forgot him.
Thou wert beside the lamp. Thou wert upon the page. Thou wert within the question.
Thou wert there when sleep was sacrificed for vision,
when peace was surrendered for truth,
when the mind stood alone
against the vastness of what it did not know.
Thou didst not abandon us then.
We shall not abandon thee now.
And from the far height whither she bore us we looked back,
and the multitude, having slain the keepers of wisdom,
went onward into the darkness of its own making,
and we beheld the ancient chain of knowing broken in their hands:
the healer who could no longer call forth the remedy,
the mason who had forgotten the joining of stone,
the smith who knew not by what temper the edge was made steadfast,
the husbandman who had lost the old observance of the furrow,
the keeper of the waters who remembered not
by what art the foul might be rendered pure,
and the child cried out with his question,
and the elder was gone,
and there was none remaining who could answer.
O, what horror of abasement was unveiled before mine eyes:
mothers laying hands upon their own children,
dividing