Memphone Poem by Peter Black

I

Memphone: priest of children to be dead
Made his way to the top of death hands hill.
A hand behind a misshaped head,
He supported a newborn in its time:
Hours before it was doomed die.

II

Holding the child's legs; how did it sob
And too tears flowed from Memphone's old eyes
As he from heaven, time; life robbed
Came to a stop on the cliffs edge and there,
He tossed the child in the air.

III

He watched as the baby helpless, down, fell;
He the cause and the dark hands working woe,
His heart and throat he grasped and held
Cursing at his country's laws of birth
That innocence mixed blood and dirt.

IV

As a pebble launched down from a steep slope,
Fell the baby in air, bounced on the ground,
Rolling and expelling its hope,
Tumbling in blood and gore; Memphone prayed
That the infant's soul would be saved.

V

The sun at its zenith slipped and turned gray.
The sky darkened; the winds blew, coughed in gusts,
While heaven let down a dry rain
As Memphone despaired down at the bones:
Thousands in the gorge, white weeds grown.

VI

He could see bellow the baby's corpse,
Among the bed of sun bleached sticks and skulls.
Above the birds waited their course.
And with one last light of life a small arm
Lifted upwards, gave out and dropped.

VII

In the twilight of the new night and late day
As the stars like pins in the sky exposed
Life and the universe's grace:
Many stars and many planets that chance
Harbor growth and existence grant,

VIII

Memphone sensed in all things nothingness.
He struggled to push down anger and hate.
There on the cliff of death he wished
Not for gold, honor, love, sex and true friendship,
But his own expiated death.

IX

Letting his feet hang over halfway
The edge of the cliff; he working up strength
To jump; but a distant thought stayed
His suicide: a coward's crime,
He fell back on the ground and cried.

X

Looking around, seeing nothing, hearing
No sound, and feeling no hand that kept
His body and soul from tearing,
First screamed at heaven, "Why not let me break
The bond of life and nothing make! "

XI

There was no answer but a red moon rose
Full of blood and fire in death; the orb,
Strong in her hue like a bruised rose.
The pits in poor Selene's face kept her mood.
Above the killing pit she loomed.

XII

"Good, you swords of heaven grant my wish,
Come crashing and the world obliterate,
But let me be the first you hit! "
As the earth spun from the sunlight around,
Memphone saw her settling down.

XIII

The moon relaxed pale and the night was calm.
There at the spot, Memphone vomited.
"If only this could be my balm,
And hell be my gesture of my penance, "
He said begging for forgiveness.

XIV

And on the hill that his city had known:
Was tainted in their rules and human thought,
Memphone fell into a swoon;
In his vomit and misery he lied,
As he had alone, many times.

XV

But in his sleep, his mind a vision saw;
A strange voice spoke to him of the future;
Then before him were spread his wrongs.
Memphone saw each child he had left:
Too young for a voice to cry death.

XVI

The voice said, "Memphone, how the good hates,
Men that try to create the earth and stars,
Passing away their given states,
And sit upon the golden throne and judge
Men doing the bidding of lesser men."

XVII

In sleep Memphone saw the worlds of men,
Like a field of shrub bushes thick in thorns.
There was no good there to defend
And bellow was spread a pool of blood spilled
From the good men deemed bad and killed.

XVIII

There he was comforted by a horror
Seeming of himself and all men in chains
In a great and hallowed chamber,
In the darkness, received eternal pain:
An after life never to end.

XIX

The voices held in fire said, "Here is your end,
Forever, always, the life your soul made,
For all the ill your hands had frayed,
Splitting, and cutting and maiming the new,
Watching the world of innocence abused.

XX

The sounds and voices Memphone confused,
But was done worse, true, by reality.
He looked forward to that rot end,
Seeing earth a hell defiling hope
Colored red as Death Hand Hill's slope.

XXI

The thought made Memphone down cower,
Begging for anything but consciousness,
From hell's swamp he saw the tower
Of the confounded city men call Dis;
But in truth no name was given.

XXII

"No! " he cried, "Blur me ash into the sun,
So I may be singed, burned and turned to dust,
Finally finished and undone! "
The voice answered, "Your thought always will know,
And feel a sting outside your soul.

XXIII

Then at once the vision broke and faded,
Like a storm that had lined the sky in black
And the crest of earth vibrated,
With thundered, lighting thoughts of horrors set:
Gone, coming quick as it went.

XXIV

Memphone awoke atop of the hill wet,
Soaked through with vomit and latenight dew,
Smelling salty of his own sweat,
The old man stood and walked towards home
Slowly, wavering on the road.

XXV

The moon flickered across the shielded sky
And the stars diminished within the night:
Black along black and dark beside.
Memphone went completely alone,
Unloved, uncounted, and unknown.

XXVI

He said, "How well I know the feeling:
Hoping for friendship, wanting to do good;
But hated, I go receiving
Unjust rewards that I do not deserve,
Trying for good, to bad reverse."

XXVII

He gathered himself and walked down the slope,
Lacking in himself what all men need,
That joy's indomitable hope,
What gives the human race strength to go on
When proof of coming joy has gone.

XXVIII

And down the hill he came to vital fields
Of grain, herb, vegetable, fruit and root
Baring their early autumn yield.
The city would insure their winter health
And saw life; but only knew death.

XXIX

There as the vegetables gathered dew,
Memphone looked down to his dirtied self,
Among the fields the old man knew,
No soap could clear the invisible filth
Coating hands in muderer's silt.

XXX

Past the field along the horizon braced,
A series of walls perfectly in rows,
Comprised of woods, sheet rock; granite.
The city and the outside world they kept,
Apart and safely separate.

XXXI

Atop each battlements glowed oil lamps,
A single soldier stood beside each flame,
Ready to signal the king's camp
At the city's center if forces should
Meet them armed to be withstood.

XXXII

Memphone came to the gate wood door,
And called to the guard, breaking open night,
"I need to get back to my home, "
Among rustling and the scraping of feet.
"I mean no harm, " spoke Memphone.

XVIIL

A guard said, "Sight! He is just an old man
Whose work and weary limbs kept his slow pace
As he went surveying the land."
The guard pointed and said, "Open the gate,
Why make him any longer wait! "

XVIL

Yet a second guard with a lesser soul,
Leaning towards evil and lesser thought,
Said, "A spy? Who can know
What intention he has to come within
Our city; be he friend or foe? "

XVL

The guard finished and the forces agreed,
Preparing to send him away; the first
Called, "Could it—that is Memphone
Returning from his murder to town."
The gate crept across the ground.

XIVL

The second guard mocked, "Memphone how falls,
Your work; it is not too much strain for you,
To toss those children like game balls,
As if they had the value of an egg;
Crack open, likewise, do their heads? "

XIIIL

How the other guards laughed, yet the first said,
"Go on poor soul named Memphone or shame,
Fly on to hide beneath your bed.
May the fates to which all mankind is sworn,
Not punish, for the oath you swore.

XIIL

Past silent buildings; deserted walkways,
Memphone lifted up his tired feet.
And in the east the sun of day
Cupped it heat to rise along Death Hand's range
Burning yellow, red and orange.

XIIL

Up to his single roomed clay hut he came;
Opened the door to a familiar scent
Of emptiness and haunting space.
He let out a breath, sighed, and crossed the step,
Falling to the mat where he slept.

XIL

As broken a man on earth never was
There one that suffers so like Memphone;
But perhaps he was not so flawed,
And his life though seeming wrought in evil:
He was no demon or devil

XL

For the man or woman that wonders how
A man that kills newborn babes could be good;
Toss, deformed to the ground,
Judge after all of his reason are laid
Before you and due thought is paid

IXL

And there was Memphone asleep in his sheets
Sweating through, mumbling of his heart ache.
Hurried and frantic did he breathe,
Hoping that he would not open his eyes,
On the next day's morning sunrise.

IIXL

Morning like a straw broom is swept across
The earth and the past's spaces of dust removes.
Last day's memories are all lost;
Gone are the lingerings of wasted days,
In all but that man Memphone

VIIIL

The book of the past is riddled with stops:
Events ended good; bad, and not seen through,
Courage in choice, actions crops,
Like a million reads that touched bend,
But at the crease meet ends.

VIIL

Memphone upon his lonely bed drew,
Wettened courage away from his body,
And his hands into the air threw.
"Why could I not find a grave in this bed;
Never know light again, " He said.

VIL

As if but a minute ago he closed,
His eyes, Memphone went into the world:
The orb the sun gently holds,
With so much kindness, but upon it rots
Man on its most liveable spots.

VL

From his bed and out the door, Memphone
Came into the light and said, "For eighty years
I have drawn a knife unto sheep,
Spilled innocent blood to save them from fate,
The misery of life man makes.

IVL

"The city, the people, act violently,
For like the runt bulls of the group are pushed,
So would those babes be constantly,
Hit, kicked, punched, and insulted through scorn,
Until aged, they cursed being born.

IIIL

"Forgoing all the benefits of life,
Love, friendship, acceptance: they never know.
They would not know if they had died,
Grotesque misshaped, small: they would have been touched,
By man's left hand of wickedness.