The Last Interview

The sage was hard to find, and shook his head when he was asked about a world view. He said there was a goal in it. Always some contaminant emerged to take away the lustre of a selfless act so death could not complete its liturgy and leave behind a vacuum, a question mark for history to ponder. There was all its cheap nobility wrapped up in stars and sentiment and laid away in calligraphic etching for a century or two, sending out its last faint paeans to a life that living souls cannot quite remember. Then it's over, just a plastic immortality conceived and specially marketed and not at all for honor's sake; that's in the doing. No, it's for the feast!...the eucharist of man, with all its polished ware, the chosen word thrown out into the midnight air and like the wine, no more... He never finished; those wide ones must grown tired of chasing glory down. They really shouldn't have to. "Virtue is its own reward," we say. and even then we peer across the room for one confirming orb of light or see, that shiver of delight, or strain to hear the praise tht we can modestly protest. The sage is dying, as are we who would do well to leave some better gifts behind than memory bestows, or paper stars, or flights to Mars, or an eroding stone. We would do well to rest our fading eyes that scan the shiny toys we fashioned from the rust of long ago, and drawing from that ancient love the universe first knew, ourselves refined create as the creator might still have in mind. ~