The Statue

A whisper of his life within the stone emerges from the cold of retrospect, that he behind the figure's vacant stare could know that other hands saw history within the reach his fingers stretched, could throw his burning soul across millenia and we are there attuned, somehow, to catch a shred of wisdom, borne upon a gray and crumbling art. And do not look apart just yet, for there is mystery within the telegraph of ages left to us that may not foil romance, but prey upon the dying age that we, ourselves encapsulate in time to shun mortality. It is a voice we may not like so much, unable to attain vitality that seizes the imagination as a Praxiteles did, a voice for us that we may not let go, though photos fall aside, for this was life incarnate in the stuff of earth, a transient man come down to breathe upon us as before. How still he is! How firm his stubborn grasp of all we are—how lost are we outside this quarried slab to meet a personage that we already knew within ourselves and fear to know again, lest life and death in harmony may speak aloud before we run away. ~