D. A. Powell
I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties... —Charles Olson | ||
We know from accounts of the judgment of Paris how Love took first:
the apple burnished by—it turns out—her own husband, working the bellows,
forging to Discord's specifications, her need to break the spaghetti strands
of marriage, her undiluted vitriol, that oversaw his flux and foundry,
guided the sparking hammer to its urgent deed.
Spoils of war.
Power, undeterred and wily as it always is, the figural eye and its agency,
took gladly the second chair, from which advantage machinations could be seen.
Advised, conferred, deployed the second wave of ships, provided mercenary aid
to every side and fanned the air, and made her counsel with all sides, supporting
every one and none, out-waiting tides.
If we believe the Greeks, the spokes of Fortune's wheel in constant turn would allow
the last to be the first—beatitudes bestowed upon the losing side,
a draught of time in which the wily ones, by their equine portage made
the mind the victor over Love's inconstancy and strife,
and, over brute acts, gave thought dominion in a golden age. But that's just myth.
Wisdom, you are the last to whom I turn. Not for your spear,
fashioned in that same fire as all bright jealous objects of desire. But for your shield.
Protect the least of us. Or lift me from this battlefield,
and take me home.
---Herein is The Iliad and The Odyssey, (and the plot line of pretty much every action/adventure film or book); also, the three ages of humankind. In our youth it is Love that commands our every moment. In mid-life, Power, and in old age, Wisdom.
Each of us encounter our own Trojan Horse, and if we are honest, we must admit that we have waited outside the gate of our enemy's city, tucked inside our wooden selves, waiting to lay siege.
Love fades, Power overreaches and destroys. It is Wisdom that brings us home.
If each of our lives follow the template of Love, Power, Wisdom, if we are the stories we tell, and also, if we are all the people we ever were from our youth to our present, then, what is it that lasts?
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