The Old Masters
About suffering, they knew no more or less
than we do, being
housed in luminescence;
a local cumulus
of feverfew and jade
reduced to void, the tower overthrown,
the bells upturned.
I see one now, impoverished
and old before his time, a lesser man’s
subordinate, or master to a trade
he never asked for.
Burdened by the weight
of office, or the whim of some mad king,
he stands alone, above the dark lagoon,
and watches, while the city fades from quartz
to plum, from plum
to cochineal, a restless drift
through subtleties and shades
he cannot
capture, though he magnifies the whole
and loves it all the more, for being
useless, fleeting, governed by no rule,
a headlong and unmasterable now
that slips away, one pier light at a time.
Source: Poetry (October 2020)
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