Pens and Swords
by Michael Eckhardt
On guard! Poets!
More like the ancient samurai than a modern soldier.
A sword-wielding-flower spinning its elegant bloom.
The flash of the blade, the fluid circular motion,
It is nearly hypnotic, in the artist's hand.
The wielders of word and sword witness video and the
atom bomb
...and then fell silent.
No new visions without the storytellers,
No carefully constructed phrases for memory and meaning.
Would "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" make
the editorial?
Would anyone listen?
This storyteller's anthem did help turn the path of
early democracy.
Drunk on success, the peasant militia, newly free,
Went forth concurring and to concur.
God values every man equally, that is the point of
democracy.
Stop the killing spree! said he,
This poem, even yet, stands as a pillar of truth;
Holding democracy above mob-rule or one more tyrannical
government.
"All creatures great and small "
man,
If you read it without a tear, you didn't get it!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I raise my pen unto you!
Thanks for raising yours, unto me!
He and his peers were the storytellers, crafting hope
from words!
Hope, most precious!
Divine-right-rule of kings became the "inalienable
rights" of all mankind.
First with a pen, and then with a sword.
The poets received and created the fight for God and
freedom!
-Instead of a, lowly, peasant's coup or rebellion.
Those years of budding democracy were clearly
The poet's finest hour to date!
Only in writing poetry or in doing
martial arts
Will the vaults of the masters, open.
The treasures of the inner life fade not in time nor
technology.
You may know the facts, but truth must be created and
believed in-
And lived!
This is the Mystery, my friend;
Live it, love it!
That, is for real!
(Our best time, is yet to come!)
(Cheers to College English 1B class!)
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