Elevation

Alone, perched upon the precipice,

The Thinker, swathed in Olympian bliss,

Thought thoughts of Truth and Power.


The din to his ears did not rise,

He did not witness Mankind’s demise

From his lofty ivory tower.


He fashioned fantastical fancies,

Complete, bereft of discrepancies

And no loopholes in its plot.


He wondrous wizardries wove,

Not of jealousy or of love,

But of far profounder thought.


Below, a clamour for his words,

The indignant, ignorant herds

Demanded of him exoneration.


He was to descend from his cave,

Provide the enlightenment they crave,

And forge the path to exculpation.


But He, proceeding warily,

Found instead, quite contrarily,

Grave danger in this plan.


The worthiest of ideas were prone,

As oft our history makes known,

To perversion by the hands of man.


In comparing the worth of each,

(The idea, and those he meant to teach)

He found a gaping chasm.


Mankind, he found with flaws replete

(Weakness, and ironic conceit,

And virtue a mere phantasm).


Those waiting below shrivelled slowly,

Bewailing fate, forsaken thoroughly,

They knew now he would never return.


The Thinker would not descend,

Mankind would never comprehend,

Prometheus’ flame would never burn.


Alone, in his contemplative recluse,

The Thinker, with Narcissus as his muse,

Celebrated with elevated gaiety.


He had entered as a lowly being,

From predestined obscurity fleeing,

And had now become a deity.