Aurelius

I was told of a man who came before,
before the ashes settled the score
and right, wrong, and justice were sent
into the scattered winds of time.
 
His footsteps trudged through mires of greed
left by those who’d stuffed the seeds
of life and joy into their back pockets
and gorged upon his dreams.

His face was sunken, his cheeks hollow,
yet his eyes burned and saw tomorrow
as lying just beyond the reach
of the sycophants within.
 
A step, another, and then his feet
struck a bundle of rags on that deserted street
and sent him sprawling into the ashes
beginning to cover the ground.

The rags rose, a shape formed,
an old man he was, kicked beaten and scorned,
but he had the last laugh, for his tormentors
had destroyed themselves with sin.
 
“My son," he said, “can’t you tell,
this place don’t seem to be doing so well,
and heaven’s a long, long way from hell,
so sit awhile with me?”
 
The first words the traveler had heard
since the disintegration of his world
drew him like an old forgotten spell
to the ground by that old man’s side.
 
“Friend,” said the old man, with deep sigh,
“nothing can break the wall so high
that lies between this festering place
and the beauty you wish to see.
 
“So what moves you, in this sorry state,
towards a certain and everlasting fate,
a permanent end, forever forgotten
by a place you’ve never known?”
 
“Sir,” the man replied with a faint smile,
“my answer’s been the same for a while,
even when the grass was green
and the oceans crystal blue.
 
“This world isn’t mine and never was,
it moves in patterns without cause,
and through times of joy and sorrow alike
has borne me ceaselessly on.”
 
The old man stirred, scratched his head
and said, “Well, tell me this instead:
if the world cares not for your volition
why do you move at all?
 
“A single man against the weight of time
can do no more than stretch the rhyme,
the lie of his motion being his free will,
the folly of his freedom.
 
“So begone with all the false delusion!
Make your stand against this confusion!
Sit down, choose not to put yourself
at the mercy of the waves!
 
“Choose not to roll the cosmic dice!
Choose not to sort through virtue and vice!
Opt out of the cycle that’s trapped you inside!
For god’s sake, don’t move forward!”
 
The old man shuddered, his energy spent,
he doubled over, his knees bent,
as the traveler lowered him gently down
to rest upon the ground.
 

 
“I’ve spent a life of bowing down
to a world hell bent on keeping me there.
I’m tired, son, don’t forsake me before
you tell me why you move.”
 
 

“Old man, there’s an altar, a shrine hidden deep,
invisible, though I saw it once in sleep
as a towering castle, a wintry fortress
of iron and brick and stone.
 
“It stands eternal, the ashes fail
its weathered battlements to assail.
It is there I shelter my weary soul
as my feet move ever forward.
 
“That place is me, it always was,
it’ll fall when ashes run their course
and my body returns into the Dust
from which it did emerge.
 
“I play the game because I must,
but I refuse to bow to greed, to lust,
the vile whisperings of a world perched
on the edge of the abyss.
 
“I’ll live and die on my own terms,
not rotting, eaten by the worms.
For what will be will always be,
and heaven’s a pleasant dream.”
 
He rose, then, and said farewell,
what became of either, none can tell.
Of their voices, mere echoes remain
carved on a broken city pavement.
 
The ashes came after the fire,
and a world grew anew, untouched by desire,
and somewhere in a verdant field
the footsteps stopped at last.