A Paradox of Time
The brilliant sun burns merciless and bright,
The desiccated earth below is dry
And desolate from its relentless blaze—
A vast and barren desert, wasteland wide.
It lies devoid of life, save one lone bird,
A phoenix soaring close to the bright disc
That burns within the empty sky above.
Of all the vast horizon, none can see
A trace of life. The phoenix, quick and keen,
In agile flight surveys the barren land,
Its piercing gaze seeks signs of life below,
Yet finds no motion save its shadowy form
That swiftly glides across the sandy ground.
"Nothing in this direction," thus it thinks,
And banks to left by shifting subtly so,
Then throws its right wing higher than its left.
The sun-scorched earth remains a barren waste,
Its colors gray, a windswept, ashen hue.
No searching finds the faintest hint of life,
Sentient or otherwise. Not even trace
Suggests that life once thrived upon this land.
But desolation, dunes and rocky crags
Are all that meet the searching eye of hope.
The winds have formed these dunes and canyons vast
Through countless ages of relentless toil.
"Perhaps," the phoenix laments, "from the first days
This land has borne no life and ever shall
Remain a lifeless desert, desolate."
And with that thought, despairing, cries aloud,
A piercing shriek, its call unanswered, lone.
Forlorn and comfortless, the phoenix swift
Descends upon the highest crag it sees,
With outspread wings that brake the mighty flight,
To land with grace in one majestic bound.
The wind blows coarse through its majestic plumes,
The phoenix scans the empty land around,
A woeful emptiness, dead silence reigns,
Save for the gales of wind that ceaseless howl.
The phoenix feels itself alone, forsaken,
A solitary isle of life amidst
A sea of lifelessness. It contemplates
Its solitary fate, till from afar
A shadow moves upon the sandy plain.
The phoenix turns its gaze and wonders much.
The shadow grows and moves in its direction,
It seems to swallow all the western sky.
The sun, though bright, begins to pale and dim,
The wafer moon between the sun and earth
Begins to move, eclipsing light with shade.
A cosmic spectacle, the phoenix stands
Transfixed, forgetting all its loneliness.
It feels a surge of gratitude arise,
For witnessing this grand celestial show.
"Why this? Why now?" it ponders, and in vain
It seeks for easy answers but finds none.
The phoenix, lost in awe of this event,
Not noticing the growing firestorm near,
A rain of meteors that blazes bright,
Coinciding with the unexpected shade.
The phoenix, like a marble statue still,
Remains unmoved and motionless in awe.
The winds are drowned by meteoric roars
That mark the barren ground with fiery blasts.
Yet on the crag, the phoenix stands untouched
By iron showers from the depths of space.
The growing fires set the earth ablaze,
A hellish furnace that consumes the ground.
The sun itself is darkened by the moon,
And Terra Firma, Earth, becomes a hell.
The phoenix, in the flames, resigns its fate,
Its fiery form consumed by searing heat,
Throws up one final gaze toward the heavens,
Then surrenders itself to final fate.
Terra Firma is now a hellish sight,
Dante's Inferno brought to life on earth.
The solar eclipse freezes at its peak,
The moon unmoving, atmosphere ablaze,
The sky alight, a thin and tenuous veil.
The phoenix's burning form then starts to change,
A shape begins to form, a human shape,
A man emerges from the dying flames.
Around him, all the landscape starts to bloom,
The sun grows softer, gentler, air grows moist,
And grass begins to sprout where flames once burned.
The flowers bloom, the trees bear fruit and shade,
The rocky crags burst forth with limpid springs,
The air is filled with birds that chirp and sing.
From simple life to beasts both great and small,
The barren earth springs forth with life again,
Renewed with vibrant flora, fauna all.
No longer phoenix, but a human form,
He gazes on his shape with new-found eyes.
Halfway through disbelief, a column bright
Descends with thunderous peal upon the earth,
A pillar of bright flame that strikes the ground.
The phoenix-man, now startled, races forth
To gaze upon this wondrous spectacle.
A limpid pool becomes a lake of fire,
The pillar burns with incandescent light,
And from the blaze a human shape takes form.
Approaching boldly now the phoenix-man,
The radiant being with god-like aura bright
Stands tall before the stunned and frozen gaze.
With booming voice that shakes the very air,
The figure speaks, "From this day forth, your name
Shall Gabriel be called." The phoenix-man,
Now christened so, is bathed in living light,
His psyche flooded with a thousand streams
Of near-infinite visions, in an instant,
The avatar and Gabriel the same.
From distant eons, to set events in motion,
To help himself, reborn, fulfill his fate.
Copyright ©
Ngoc Nguyen
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