Odyssey In Lexicon Land Poem by C Richard Miles

Once paladins on palanquins
Penned palimpsests on parchment skins
To chronicle mythology
And primitive cosmology
By giant gabbro megaliths
Inscribed with karmic hieroglyphs.

Once troglodytes in crystal caves
Carved alabaster architraves
Where asphodel and amaranth,
Entwined in tantric clusters, danced
By coromandel colonnades
Festooned with amaryllis spathes.

Once myriads of myrmidons
Delivered plangent orisons
To omnipresent oligarchs
And venerated patriarchs
Who gazed upon the millions
From gold-brocade pavilions.

Once harps, with strings of spider's silk
On pedestals as white as milk
Wrought fine from pure chalcedony,
Joined in with mystic harmony
To celebrate incessantly
With royalty and peasantry.

Once, all was hushed and all was still
And eyes were fixed on yonder hill
To seek where sacred ones would come
From labyrinthine depths unplumbed
Where drumbeats clamoured strong and slow
To hail the avatars below.

But time has sped and worlds have flown.
Primordial realms are lost and gone;
Inexorably the future looms
To take us on where progress blooms
And beckons us to speed apace
To sail through interstellar space

To lands where extraterrestrials dwell
And chant with paranormal spells
On planetoids of sphalerite
Where vapour trails of ghoulish white
Bedizen psychedelic skies
Entrancing blank, befuddled eyes.

There we shall sojourn endlessly
And never wander needlessly
Since, satisfied by decadence,
We'll savour salient permanence,
Luxuriate like paladins
And rest on princely palanquins.