Jerry H. Jenkins

ASTERION'S HOUSE

     for Jorge Luis Borges

They hate me, for I never leave
my house of polished stone,
yet they are welcome. I receive
all who wish to come.

The house contains uncountable rooms,
columns and corridors,
cellars pitched in silent gloom,
fountains and marble floors.

They say that I'm a prisoner.
This is false, you know.
There are no locks; there are no doors.
I am always free to go.

Once I went outside these walls,
to the temples and the streets.
The people stared at me, appalled,
their faces white as sheets.

They clutched their children in their arms,
fell to their knees and prayed,
implored the gods they not be harmed,
or ran away, afraid.

I feared them and their hateful land,
as much as they feared me.
Their faces were flat as the palm of your hand,
mottled, horrid to see.

Here, the night is always long;
longer still the day.
There is no laughter, music or song,
no other with whom I play.

But there is diversion enough for me;
the labyrinths entertain.
I plunge through the echoing gallery
till darkness fills my brain.

I hurl myself into the walls
until my head is sore,
or fall from the roof into the halls,
lie bloody upon the floor.

Of all the games, I like the most
the one of the other Me.
I pretend he visits, that I am the host,
and serve him obsequiously,

Saying "Here is the pool" and "Notice this stone",
"I knew you would like the drain",
or "Here is the corridor full of bones",
and we laugh again and again.

Every few years, some men appear
to be cleansed of all their sin.
I run to them gladly when I hear
that they have arrived within.

The ceremony is swift and clean.
They fall in their dying places.
Their bodies reflect in the marble's sheen,
their hands clasped over their faces.

One of them prophesied when he died
my redeemer would set me free.
Now, I wait like an eager bride,
knowing he will come for me.

I hope he will come as soon as he can.
Will he be a bull? Will he
be a bull, perhaps, with the head of a man?
Or will he be like me?

HUBBLE'S OMEN

We dare not spend our time unwisely here.
Who can say when we'll be born again,
or in what future guise, what strange frontier?
Love's the better part of living's pain,
too rich a coin to keep in fear's small purse,
and better far than what awaits between
each incarnation when we must rehearse
who we'll be next, in light of who we've been.

From nightmare dark we come repeatedly
to live our firefly second, then descend
again to black holes where no Gabriel's horn
can ever sound, from which we cannot free
ourselves from cycles that can never end,
unless, in desperation, love is born.

THREE

     Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' The Library of Babel

This room is windowless and bare.
I am here alone,
seated on a simple chair
beside a telephone
that never rings and has no dial—
only a dial tone.

I know that in another room
just beyond the wall
I sit, with no directory,
no idea who to call
and wonder, if beyond these rooms,
there's anything at all,

While in a third bare room I hold
a phone directory
whose pages, infinitely thin,
contain the number three
in small neat print in paragraphs
repeated endlessly.

The universe is rooms like these,
arranged in groups of three,
that multiply the tedium
of my ubiquity
and that repeating number
with blind fidelity.

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