Workers On A Roman Arch Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

Workers on a roman arch
Summer, steamy, brawny muscles
Red
With work, with sun, with whip.
The lord reigns
The lord oversees
No workers' rights.
Wind winnowing slow
A monk with a long
Beard but black
Winds up the
Footpath
As medieval songs
Well out of the well
Of the deep monastery.
An attic
Florence. A Writer
Is still at the desk.
The houses are asleep
And yet he labors.
For he is Politian.
Knight crosses the edge of
A plain into a wood
Of dense sub-conscious.
Behind him Sancho Panza.
The knight hungrily looks
Here and there
Where to rest, finds no room
‘Upon the green with satyrs
We must rest Sancho'
Sancho agrees for all in all
He's just a servant.
He undresses the heaving armor
Of the knight that clanks
Resounding in those silent woods.
The knight is Don Quixote.
Near was a town, taverns and beds.
But Don Quixote passing through
The town was
Mesmerized in the sub-conscious
Already:
Ignored the town crossed into
The wood of night.
At least he heard and
Sweetened his senses by
The lure-chanting of the nightingale
Till early Dawn; and
From there the splendors of the early Dawn.
A posse of soldiers
Went up the hill
Revolution.
They carried the wounded.
Some are drunken.
Blood drops and seeps.
Vive la Revolution!
Wounded, wounded,
Carry the Poet-Seer
But wait!
There's tear-gas bring
The oxygen masks
We in modern war be!



So
Many
Thing
Events
Yet
Going
Round
And
Round
For
The
Most
Advanced
Skiff
In
The
Race
Circling
The
Earth
Finds
Itself going
Round
And
Round
And
Round.
The
Hill
Awaits
But
Silence
Its
Patience
Tests
The
Woods
Have
Been
Patient
As
Long
As
The
Enrooted
Trees
Enrooted
Erect
standing



Workers on a roman arch
Summer, steamy, brawny muscles
Red
With work, with sun, with whip.
The lord reigns
The lord oversees
No workers' rights.
Wind winnowing slow
A monk with a long
Beard but black
Winds up the
Footpath
As medieval songs
Well out of the well
Of the deep monastery.
An attic
Florence. A Writer
Is still at the desk.
The houses are asleep
And yet he labors.
For he is Politian.
Knight crosses the edge of
A plain into a wood
Of dense sub-conscious.
Behind him Sancho Panza.
The knight hungrily looks
Here and there
Where to rest, finds no room
‘Upon the green with satyrs
We must rest Sancho'
Sancho agrees for all in all
He's just a servant.
He undresses the heaving armor
Of the knight that clanks
Resounding in those silent woods.
The knight is Don Quixote.
Near was a town, taverns and beds.
But Don Quixote passing through
The town was
Mesmerized in the sub-conscious
Already:
Ignored the town crossed into
The wood of night.
At least he heard and
Sweetened his senses by
The lure-chanting of the nightingale
Till early Dawn; and
From there the splendors of the early Dawn.
A posse of soldiers
Went up the hill
Revolution.
They carried the wounded.
Some are drunken.
Blood drops and seeps.
Vive la Revolution!
Wounded, wounded,
Carry the Poet-Seer
But wait!
There's tear-gas bring
The oxygen masks
We in modern war be!