Terra Cognita Part 4

4.
Between our small hands grasping for the light
and our gnarled hands closing on the dark...
we know nothing, we learn nothing.
The dead eye reflects the moon rising
over the waters of Lake Victoria to no purpose.
Our delicate chamber music, our greatest Symphonies,
are spewed over the shore of Lake Geneva,
over the vaults of gold, to no one's benefit,
signals to the deaf who have neither signs nor hands.

      O Beautiful for.....
                  For what?

For the garroted cellos of Bosnia?
The jigging afternoon cabaret of wounds?
The circus of snipers? The shattered girl
whose head is a nest of gnats and bullets?
The singer whose throat is home to maggots?

(And then She rises in the rose light.
She knows the old songs.
She knows the ancient, chanted spells,
the tempo of bones slammed on taut skins.
She knows the patterns etched
in shadows on the caves' walls
by a million campfires.
She knows the hot must of the tents
warm with sleep in deepest winter.
These things are her dowry, her teaching,
her legend and legacy.
            And so she dances
            with the shadows of the dusk
            until the ages turn to rust.)