Jerry H. Jenkins
HANNIBAL'S DREAM
from an account by the historian Livy
I dreamed a godlike man. When I awoke,
he stood before me as a glowing mist
that rises from the fields in morning sun.
He was silent, yet I know he spoke
and when he did, he flickered like a flame.
I could see beyond him, as through smoke.
"God has sent me here", the spirit claimed,
"to guide you to the realms where you must go:
up the coast, and over upland plains,
past the waters of the river Ebro.
Keep your gaze on me, and I will lead you
out of Spain and into Italy.
But never look behind."
I felt a chill,
a wind from nowhere blowing through his eyes.
He turned and moved ahead of me. I tried
to keep pace, but he rose into the skies
and burned above the crest of distant hills.
For days I followed that relentless guide.
I was nothing if not dutiful;
(and, frankly, was afraid to take the chance)
I never looked at what was to the rear,
or anything that lay on either side.
Nothing tempted me to turn my glance
to what was sinister or beautiful.
But one day something rustled far behind,
something I could feel as much as hear.
Even then I kept my gaze ahead.
But it grew louder, like a rising wind,
the earth shook, and I turned as if compelled.
A huge snake's head rose up where I had been,
a smoking cloud that towered above the trees.
Where it moved, trees burned and forests fell.
Behind the ruin it left, a coal-black sky
crackled and thundered, and the great snake's eyes
glittered. Its tongue, a barbed pitchfork of Hell,
flickered, and lightning bathed the Pyrenees.
"What does this vision mean?", I asked the ghost.
It spoke from far away through wavering light:
"This is the Roman Empire, laid to waste
and toppled like the forest from its height.
Now do what must be done, and don't look back."
The spirit faded. As I stood engrossed,
the serpent's coils started to unwind.
From out of them, as far as I could see,
an army marched, spears flashing, with a black
and writhing sky above them. Great and gray,
the elephants were trumpeting behind.
I, Hannibal of Carthage, on that day
turned toward the Alps and waiting Italy.
AMPATA
That is no country for a virgin. Cold;
it's always cold. Up there, the air is thin,
the Andes chill seeps through each poncho fold,
and the crater catches every gust of wind.
The late day sunlight burns the far rim gold.
For centuries this is the way it's been.
The gods neglect their servants and we wait
on dark peaks next to heaven's mountain gate.
I was first. Later, two others came,
handmaidens to my loneliness, we three,
sacrificed in times that have no name,
companions in the stone-dead centuries.
Lightning seared them with its ardent flame.
Parasite and lichen ravaged me.
Tanned and shrunken, sculpted from within,
I am the work of weather more than men.
What is the use of sorrow? Would our tears
erode the granite, grain by gradual grain?
We are the membership of long, long years.
Transformed by bog and berg and arid plain,
now and again, one of us reappears
with drum-taut lucent skin and fretwork veins.
We of the patient ossuary know
where honor and sacrifice are bound to go.
You are our latest suitors. Now you come,
seeking us and what we have, to learn
of our lives. And you would violate us. Some
of your priests bring knives. I can see their hard eyes burn
with desire, but the voice of love in them is dumb.
Still, they are kind, if reserved and taciturn.
Heaven is not for virgins. It is cold.
Down here, it is warm, and a virtue to be old.
MISER
The river flows from somewhere far upstream,
polluted with a hundred years of filth.
High above its banks, gray mansions dream,
the gargoyle products of some ancient wealth.
The trees cling to their acorns and their leaves,
reluctant to surrender what they've made,
but red squirrels forage stealthily as thieves,
rustling the leaf-drifts, warm in the autumn shade.
Crows glide in to congregate among
the high bare treetops, jostled by the breeze.
Gray and brown the river flows along,
inscrutable, to merge with distant seas.
The miser trees are stripped in the cold wind
that scatters their gold along the river's bend.
LADDER BOY
standing on a ladder
ninety stories tall
standing on a ladder
boy, you’re bound to fall
emptiness above you
emptiness below
when the ladder breaks, boy
where you going to go?
now a single blackbird
flies from east to west
blackbird going home, boy
to his blackbird nest
now the ladder’s shaking
swinging back and forth
like a bell about to ring
with a sound of death
a sound that’s bound to hurl you
out into the void
nothing is below your feet
everything’s destroyed
now your eyes are frightened
your hair is blowing wild
your mouth is in a hollow O
like a frightened child
call now for your mother
nowhere to be found
call now for your father
cold and underground
call upon the friends you scorned
they won’t answer you
tumbling through the vacant air
what else can you do?
fall forever, ladder boy
through the mist alone
hungry cold and terrified
the empty air’s your home
TANG HORSE
Once upon a wild and windblown plain,
an archetypal stallion was alive.
A sculptor saw how sun upon its mane
outlined it in a light as sharp as knives.
How handsomely its porcelain image stands.
Its smooth ceramic contours curve and flow,
tracing how that ancient sculptor’s hands
idealized the horse seen long ago.
His copycats repeat a dynasty's
stylistic preference in cheaper clay,
with clones that bear new infidelities.
Among the random poses I display,
What grace of mine may catch another's eye,
what casual act of being make him pause
to stylize me; what sweatshop hacks will try
to mimic him, eliding what I was?
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