(Ex)colere, exercere, studere - by Eliot Cardinaux

Cast in a glimpse,

bronze angles,

cry for us –

what was tempered

from the dust;

we were not,

our eyes were not,

all that did not belong to us.

Gathered, they gathered

the wheat, the moonlight,

the word spoke,

primaevus,

the young, was a drab shawl

and marked the man, Abel’s brother

for what crime he didst commit.

And Hesse, in doubt,

called to an older friend,

from his youth

and called not.

And was no sermon

and Pilate was not there,

the students

and Pound’s beard,

but a stubble.

And envy spoke not,

silent, Academicus,

analysis, and spoke of it all,

and was not of shame.

And I awoke, seeing the birds around me,

burdenless, and the mountain was not,

and was not survival,

and the beholder stared upon the perceived

like a child with his mouth open,

and the birds around me,

turned not their eyes.

And drank, they drank coffee

in the room, furnished with old oak,

and the book, covered with dust,

and on the shelf,

a bust of Ceasar,

soggy with whining.

Amherst, November 2009-January 6^th, 2010