A Parable

One wonders what the assassin thought.
Was he insane? He may have been.
Or was he simply one of us, who stared up
At the edifice from a gecko perch, like ours,
Uncertain, not far from the ground, and saw
Nobody else would act to break the thing
To which we cling and build, each layer
Mortared by our fears? Whose is this,
Which we have made, and why, if we have
Made it, have we made it theirs? He tried
To know, and why do we freeze on its
Surface, fearing falling lower? It is ours!
We ought to walk its top, but some among
Us hold us back, and some lay broken at its
Base, believing those to whom we gave it
Earned it; better geckos, them. And the
Assassin disagreed, and did his deed to show
Us that what we had made did not belong
To those who claimed it. Shots were heard.
We shook our heads. Would this destroy
The edifice? We clung the more. It stayed
In place, and the assassin turned and shrugged,
As if to tell us, "Until others do as I have done,
It will not fall."



Poetry by Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 67 times
Written on 2014-03-04 at 21:27

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