by Gadarene
Another voice has fallen low; the ruins of Rome are smiling
And the Titans, glancing over dusty syllables of sundials
Make a small and simple movement, cover one of us in shade
Sympathetic shudders leap through our hearts
In metronomic memory, hastening cadence
As those unseen hands craft the rhythms of mortality
Frightened of the rising past, we shut ourselves
Imposing interpretation upon Salieri, this is what he meant
This is what we mean when we bite a stutter
From the lips of reason, saying ‘Shelley was wrong,
Ozymandias has had his season, but we will have ours.’
Spending that season marking time, damning deities;
Obliterating all implications of passage through the worlds.
This is why we shape you into fables of valor,
Myths of crafted darkness; this is what we are taught
In the “democracy of the dead,” the necessary republic
Past on present, weighted down we march,
Carrying ahead the voices of our teachers
Playing amanuensis, driven by heraldry
Poising the sacrament atop makeshift mountains
To be revered as fervently as the chosen color of our gods
In hopes of storm or cessation, amnesiac absolution
Transferring possession of legacy’s burden:
Snowden’s secret, finite, fruitless, come to dust.
This is why we tremble at the thought of passing on
This is what we mean when we speak for you
This is how we have come to this place, this is why
You see us smashing the face of every wristwatch
Against the mountain in dutiful three-quarters time
We echo the sentiments of Salieri
And hear only echoes, we disdain the Romans
And travel upon their roads, we expect divinity
But we have broken apart the measurements of the divine.