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MEN OF PRECARIOUS NATURE
MEN OF PRECARIOUS NATURE
Dante had his man looking down into the inferno;
He spent so many cantos showing us hell instead
Of imagining heaven. Dante was a downer.
Blake showed us a fierce old man, irascible, surly,
Irritable, chained and majestic, bending over with
Calipers to measure the world’s ruin; another downer.
DaVanci had his grand man measure from inseam to
Collarbone; once again a heavenly man is brought
Down to size by yardsticks and spread on parchement.
It takes these downers my friend to bring us to sanity;
And writers of dark cabbages to shock us heavenward.
We have been waiting for apocalyptic ruin for centuries.
The joys of Sisyphus is never to succeed; the musculature
Of Michelangelo’s David is sculpted from such angst; it
Is the precarious nature of men to be jealous of the gods.
Men build architecture in the heavens and abandon it as
Space junk; let us remember how much of our life ruin is
And spend the rest of our time in joyous jubilation.
For all of our precarious nature mimics the capriciousness
Of the gods we try to emulate; however, let us regain Eden
By not recapitulating a fall; let us look up instead of down.
