! Rock, Stone, Sand, Wind, Time, Eternity Poem by Michael Shepherd

the sculptor,
called to the great task; through
the huge columns, ringing echoes even with a sandal’s tread,
the stone chamber,
the assembled court, gold, enamelled blue,
eyes everywhere, walls, men,
the Pharoah’s presence:

‘show me as I am:
man as lion,
king of the living and the dead;
show me as eternity’

the frail old man in heavy robes,
the courtiers nodding, smirking…

more men than men could count
whipped to task under a burning noonday sun;
behind, a half-built pyramid;
slaves chipped away the ancient bedrock
according to the careful measurements,
blocking out the figure, until the day
the sculptor himself – and older now –
mounts the scaffold to begin chipping
the face of time that meets eternity.

‘time says nothing but I told you so’;
which Pharaoh died before his monument?
five thousand years before our own stone dreams,
how many years of scaffolding?
a temple hollowing between its long, long paws.

was it looked upon with awe, or
as meaningless to children,
to their children’s children,
as the frozen gesturing bronzes of our public squares? they,
running off around the back of it
to clamber onto its stone tail?

the night wind already piling up the drifting sand,
night wind in palm leaves whispering of metaphor,
green shores lost under dunes of time;
wind and sand sculpting their own unanswered question:
what is the reason we should ask of time?
what is the question whose answer is timelessness?