There Came a Day

A modern Ozymandias

“The Oxbow,” Thomas Cole, 1836.

There Came a Day

There came a day
when even his name was forgotten.

The last gilded letters
affixed to proud institutions
no longer caught the light in their spelling.

Worn down to nothing readable,
clinging, unseen for centuries,

they finally sloughed themselves off,
shamed by their own irrelevance.

The last patent had long ago expired,
the syndicate splintered,
the foundations foundered;

mainframes had dissolved
as had all things hard and soft.

Tungsten and cobalt,
tantalum and silicon
had rejoined the underground,
no longer purposed to the empire
he claimed was enduring and progressive

but in fact was only temporary,
an ugly fever dream of the few.

The day his name dropped
from humankind’s memory,

of course, no one noticed.

***

Long before that, so very long,
when time exacted his last breath,
he had a vision:

every image of him, every likeness,
every single seemingly uncountable word
that shouted his name

or sang his fate
would someday vanish…
even what you’re reading now.

Awareness flickered,
like a reptile tongue
snapping up dew,
allowing him in that moment

to see: all his machinations,

the back-door dealing
and back-slapping
and back-stabbing,

all the necessary lies
and necessary deaths
—which were not, in fact,
necessary—

would never secure his ill-gotten dominions
for perpetuity;

would never succeed in bottling his soul like a genie
to be unearthed at a far-off dawn;

would never master the universe
or the globe
or even one crooked heart.

At the end,
though billions knew of his passing,
not one tear marked the occasion,
and as this world slipped his grasp,
too late to him came truth:

the day would come
when no one would remember his name

because none had loved
the man who owned it, and
the man who owned it
had loved none
but himself.

Too late to him came this:
Time erases all but love;
all else is carved in sand.

***

The day his name was forgotten,

as on every day before it
and every day after,
the air rippled ever so gently,

birds warbled as they always do,
and the slow river wound itself
through green folds in the earth,

ferrying silicon to grateful trees
who traded it for hardiness,

spreading their blessing a little fuller
in the light of the eternal sun

with no regret.

---

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As always, keep your light shining bright.

xox
M

P.S. This song/video landed in my life while I was writing this poem; I hope you enjoy it.