Mostly silent

=0=0=0=

B l e s s e d   S l e e p

Capernaum Cemetery

Denmark, South Carolina

=0=0=0=

How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead,

The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust?

Is there a horn we should not blow as proudly

For the meanest of us all, who creeps his days,

Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely?

I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste,

Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs

Of weeping women through long walls of trumpets;

Say rather, I am no one, or an atom;

Say rather, two great gods, in a vault of starlight,

Play ponderingly at chess, and at the game's end

One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor

And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece

Forgotten there, left motionless, is I ...

Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power,

Am only one of millions, mostly silent;

One who came with eyes and hands and a heart,

Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it.

Say that the fates of time and space obscured me,

Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me,

Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spiders

Dispatched me at their leisure ... Well, what then?

Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,

The horns of glory blowing above my burial?

From Tetelestai

= Conrad Aiken =

=0=0=0=

Happy Wednesday