On the Contemplation of Man

Why fare these men on so unseemly forth?

What drives them day by day to carry on

Amidst the tumult and the chaos of

Insanity so manifest in form:

In hatred crawling deep beneath the skin,

In carnal parasitic lust encroached,

In loss and love and tragedies adorned

With screams and cries and desperate ruined souls?

The earth has borne for oft' and ever it

Has swept its way around the scorching sun

These multiplicities of mournful fates,

These heavy yokes that shackled bind men's souls

Enfeebled by the choking mortal strain,

But they enslaved do wage this war against

The fortunes dolled to them from birth to death

And rising up, the very gods they dare

Ingloriously strike against with arms

Rebellious raised up to the heights above.

Omnipotent, scarce imposed be these gods

(Despite the valour beating in men's hearts)

By beings barred and bound from touching the

Celestial sea that spans the midnight realms

Above and floods into oblivion.

Relentless, bold, yet doomed and dying stand

They thus, these mortal men in mortal lands,

Far-thrown to distant suns and cursed to die,

In aeons darkness damned eternal lie.

 

What hope have you? What hope is there to hold?

In vain you strive on fighting to the end,

In death you pass, to never wake again:

A flame forever dimmed by bitter cold,

A fire that once raged on, ever bold.

But now the narrow path of fate does bend;

No virtue can such loathed lanes amend.

To death you slink and down into the grave,

Yet still you shout, "I'm saved! I'm saved! I'm saved!"

 

This is a poem I completed only just a few days ago but began working on toward the middle of December 2010. It all began on an extremely long bus ride back home to Louisville, KY that lasted about 15-16 hours. I was listening to music at the time (Silversun Pickups, if I recall correctly) and gazing out of the window and across the Georgian horizon on into the sky. I started thinking about the world and, more specifically, mankind and its relation to the divine. The final version of the poem (which bears not even a single line of the original) was completed a few nights ago in the darkness of my unlit room around midnight. Like the circumstances that prompted its conceptualization, the poem is one of brooding contemplation. However, it is not my contemplation that is necessarily presented, but the contemplation of an unknown individual who is analyzing the human condition and the circumstances surrounding mortal existence. But this begs the question, "Who is this narrator?" I leave the answering to you, dear reader.