Interestingly, even though I’ve posted quite a few of these fantasy poems now, this one was actually the first that I wrote. I guess that makes it quite special in its own way, and it’s also a little longer than some of the others, but in a sense, it’s the starting point for all of the other poems that I’ve been posting from this collection, week by week, so I hope you enjoy this ‘beginning’!
Even Gods Must Sleep
Once cathedral, now ash-
fitting, dark matter to dark matter,
ebony and stone to crumbling remnants
of saintly cries, chants, hands raised,
begging for all manner of gods to keep
the flames from enveloping the G——- monks;
they began with their current devotion,
the miser, the herald of austerity,
to whom they sang in monotones twice a day,
every day, for five years since the changing
of the monarchy, and public belief.
But his thin lips remained sealed,
so thinner fingers scrambled over texts,
locked away, not yet burnt as the decree demanded,
remembering the ecclesiastical passions of years past:
the cat-faced goddess they once praised,
with her shimmering gown and talon-hands,
who was still blessed in the shadow-halls of thieves
and others acquainted well with the night;
would she answer the newly-devout, her old flames?
But her eyes remained closed,
so the collective turned upon each other,
rescuing personal prayers from hidey-holes-
a loose floorboard, a wall crevice,
a pouch hanging from the neck, near the heart,
a locked box wrapped in a moth-eaten robe-
within these spaces were the old ways,
the family rites, the personal saviours,
and each was called to, in contending chants,
as beards were singed and hands blackened-
none could leave, of course, not until
the deities’ uncaring was truly confirmed.
But the gods of their families remained unfound,
and as beams came crashing down, weak stone
giving way to the crunch of supporting wood,
the screams rose in their nonsensical tones,
no longer giving thanks or beseeching aid
from the unseen, but begging anything of anyone,
mortal or immortal, touched by the heavens
or cursed, as most are, to live and die on the ground;
would any answer the call of the most holy,
those who had dedicated their lives to beings
that would not save them in their time of need?
If only the structure could last-
if only a loose bolt from the sky
had not fallen on such a dry night-
if only the great ones had not
fallen asleep at an early hour-
if only the pails of water, thrown
more for personal morality
(look there, I tried to save those
men of the cloth, I truly did,
and doesn’t that deserve a drink or two?)
than in true hopes of rescue,
could quell the fiery beast
devouring the cathedral, piece by piece.
Now, it is ash, fallen stones in an arrangement
that could, in a manner of speaking,
be still called a place of worship-
they did not have to move the charred remains
far to the G——- graveyard, after all.
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Oskar Leonard 