Daring to be reborn

(2019)

This greedy modern age

Created a new Pandora with rage.

Her beauty filled the abyss of my desire,

I was caught on Cupid’s fire.

She and I, like doves in the sky,

Leisured the days of eternity

Till from her jar I unleashed a modern tragedy,

A raging inferno of materialism, upon me.

The mighty mountains, forests and meadows of my mind,

Whose terror-mused sight

Once awoke pure delight,

Were engulfed in the flames crimson bright.

Now, what once was

Is no more:

A fiery and barren desert is my mind

Affecting my soul in every tiny part.

Thus, the innate desire for sublime

Has faded in this modern time.

No more echoes nature’s rhyme

In the halls of my soul’s sacred shrine

At whose radiant agora

I once took an oath to Gaia:

“An eternal guardian I shall be

Of thy mountains, forests and sea.”

And the oath that flourished in the ancient shrine of my heart

Withered in the modern desert of my mind.

A paragon of disgrace I became in this blaze,

An oath-breaker till the end of my days.

There is now one path left in my life, forlorn:

I shall dare to be reborn

And be baptized in the flames of my own history

To prove Gaia that I re-bend my knee.

I shall then summon the tearful clouds of Gaia

To the fiery desert of my mind

To once again plant the seed of humanity

And guard it from my own calamity

For fading,

Yet still nobly glowing,

The rays of hope

Enlighten tomorrows.

Alas,

If I fail again to serve the innate shrine,

Let the epitaph of Phaeton be mine:

Though greatly failed,

More greatly he dared.