Response to the Spinx
It is I, Jake Cosmos Aller
I will answer your secrets
Oh great Sphinx
Slumber no more.
And I too have waited
For a long time
To answer your questions.
Who is the man-child?
There are so many these days.
What is the known fruit
Of which you speak?
What pray tell is the Daedalian plan?
And how does life overtake death?
Your riddles are getting a bit annoying
Please speak straight to me
And I will do the same.
You are awaking
You are unveiling
You are scaring me
With your unnatural
Supernatural calm
Your silence killing me.
Yes I can see the waves
They are indifferent
To the desires of us mere mortals
Do you control them oh Sphinx?
Ah I being to see
That you control through secrets deep
The basic matter of the universe.
Are you in league with God?
The devil or the ancient gods
Does Cthulu yet slumber?
The world is music
Music is the world
And God is moved by music
Is that what you are saying?
Mr. Sphinx, you are losing me here
In this day and age
We have lost the ability
To discern deep metaphors
We are so busy with the mundane
Don't you see?
Is this a reference to Jesus
Is he the man child of your prophecy
Is about?
And is that the meaning
Jesus is the light
The joy shines in his peace
On us all?
And now you are blaming humanity
For all the evils of the world?
For our greed, for our poisoning the ground
With our pollution and crime?
I think you are too harsh,
In your verdict on us humans -
We are only human, you know.
And again with the arcane references
It is so hard to follow you.
Who is the great mother?
Who indeed? Was it me
Or all of humanity
That did him in?
We are still talking about Jesus
I presume?
I would love to know that myself
It does seem that so many Christians
Have been driven mad indeed.
I disagree with my poetic friend
After talking with you
I don't find your words
Pleasant songs to me
More like the rantings
Of a deranged demigod
Afraid no one is following him
And his words anymore.
Your words are fading
In time their meaning
Is not sublime
More divine madness
Then anything else.
Now you are alluding to Satan?
Or the devil or something else?
What do you mean?
Please speak plainly.
Another mysterious phrase
That leaves me pondering
The deep meaning
Hidden behind your words.
Now you are almost sounding
Like Dante and leading us
To the divine comedy?
Is this another reference
To Jesus?
And is this a reference to Lucifer
and fallen angels?
And who is your secret lover?
Another riddle
Another impenetrable word salad
And Sphinx I wish you would speak
Now tell us what you mean.
Another strange allusion.
What do you mean?
I agree the truth is often a lie.
And time is indeed a false answer.
Where are you going, Sphinx?
And that was the end
of our dialogue.
The sphinx fled.
not answering my questions.
The Sphinx
Ralph Waldo Emerson - 1803-1882
The Sphinx is drowsy,
The wings are furled;
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
"Who'll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?--
I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;--
"The fate of the man-child;
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?
"Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,
Your silence he sings.
"The waves, unashamed,
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.
"Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,--
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.
"The babe by its mother
Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,--
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.
"But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.
"Outspoke the great mother,
Beholding his fear;--
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere:--
'Who has drugged my boy's cup?
Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned the man-child's head?'"
I heard a poet answer,
Aloud and cheerfully,
"Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time;
They fad in the light of
Their meaning sublime.
"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of nature
Can't trace him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
"Profounder, profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
"Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?--
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
"Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flied;
And under pain, pleasure,--
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.
"Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits!
Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx--
Her muddy eyes to clear!"--
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,--
Said, "Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
"Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see they proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply."
Uprose the merry Sphinx,
And crouched no more in stone;
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon;
She spired into a yellow flame;
She flowered in blossoms red;
She flowed into a foaming wave;
She stood Monadnoc's head.
Through a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame:
"Who telleth one of my meanings,
Is master of all I am.
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| Writing Prompt |
Copy one your Favorite Poems from one of your Favorite Poets. (Include Author's name)
Then write a Poem as an answer or response to it in your own words.
Leave a couple spaces between the original and your poem. (Include your name the same as you did with the original) |
Author Notes
The prompt was to write a poem in response to a favorite poem. I imagined a dialogue between the Spinx in Ralph Waldo Emerson's Dream of the Spinx and a poet who tries and cannot make sense of what the Spinx is saying.
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