The Body Of My Temple Lays Unswept; Poem by David McLansky

The Body Of My Temple Lays Unswept;

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The body of my Temple lays unswept;
The old rituals forgotten in disuse;
My sacred precincts have their worn out steps;
My statues maimed by vagrant careless youths;

Yet in this holy place of earthly silence,
There echoes still the wisdom o'er the altar,
The silken ghost still shimmer in remembrance,
The cadenced hymns still whisper without faltar.

Weeds re-seed basalt and alabaster,
Cracking blocks of stone of fiercest labor,
O'erturning my conceits without disaster,
Weathering without benefit of Savior.

The Aegean cracks the orange fluted tiles,
Exposing day where once was beam and plank;
Dead leaves cut sacred columns now defiled;
Where myrtle sweetened now is sour and dank.

My glory faded, this crumbling mausoleum
Is all that stands in memory of my strength;
Where once I labored, mighty, Herculean;
I breathless limp five cubits distance length.

Thursday, September 18, 2014
Topic(s) of this poem: love
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