Poetry for People, Dragons & Other Unusual Creatures by Mel West The Prometheid (1972)  Contents Part 1, "The_baptism_of_Eli" Part II, "The_Dog_Killer" Part III, "Eli's_Search_for_Funny_Bald_Men" Part IV, "Eli's_Journey_down_the_river_Styx" Part V, "The_Redemption_of_Anna" Part VI, "Spiteful_Timon" ParVII, "The_War" Part VIII, "Impressions_of_Cambria" Painting by Maravot from the 60's Part 1 The Baptism of Eli In a world of great sorrow and despair, Among a mass of greed everywhere, (where vanities and machines ruled over vice) Stood a very tiny hamlet of tiny people Who erected a broken dish over a teetering steeple Against all that's wrong and for all that's nice. And behold! Around the plain prominence, Where the broken dish spewed its eminence, Grew the treasured lotus of virgin white Unraped by greed's insatiable passion, Beyond dark shadows in the fertile sun, Untainted by the Lotus-Eaters' slimy bite. Aye! Though exposed to nature's whims and ways, Blossoms unfurled and lit the baleful haze Of mankind's polluted minds and actions, Slowly seeping through every crevice, Trying to saturate the lighted bliss, It was enough to sponge the light as it runs.   And as they glowed, butted against the haze, The fuzzy red light of promising days Telegraphed over the land of the Lotus-Eaters (Where thieves and Hawks were rampant indeed For tantalizing wisps of Lotus seed). "Danger's about" said the hamlet's leaders.  It soon came to pass when blood stained eyes Peered with pain through foreboding overt lies To see still standing on a tree studded plane That worthy monument in the hamlet square Which suckled a happy thoroughfare, Giving hope to the poor and relief from pain.  It came to pass – we knew it would– That the Lotus-Eaters would seek more dead wood, Exhausting the soils and a kingdom's life, Consuming Truth's stalks and childish dreams; They groveled in haste to cross our streams, Playing songs of the dead composed on a mute fife.  They crept through dead thickets and parched earth, Down rocky scarps broken by stubbled mirth, They came upon a good lad hard at work, Tilling the soils of his promised land. Plowing he stopped (and with calloused hands) And set to sow the crops of a united kirk.  Eli was on the tractor at the time Seeding the golden fields through this rhyme When he spied beady eyes and an eagle nose Peering over the crest of a rock nearby. "Where are you headed?" he sought to pry; The hooked nose answered, "to the Lotus groves." The beady eyes rose above the mossy rock Wringing bloody hands; he was the Head Hawk. Saliva dripped down lips nervous with lust While words of deception slipped through the air: "Good lad, we'd love to worship your flower." Said the lad, "It's at the hamlet; honor it I trust."  Eli was a trusting lad, you know (As would be of the men the hamlet did grow); And, unsuspecting no evil intent, He queried no more of the wicked throng And passed singing the thresher's song Long ago written in a pauper's tent.  His tractor chugged on to nourish the soil, Filling dark nuggets with a golden toil, On through the day, until the night, When the boy could see the waning sun Warning with long shadows of the day to come, The day of the parasite.  Silently slipping by the dusk covered him, And hid the shadows of the parasites grim, Whose hellish scent of death's decay, Whisked over brown hills darkening to deeper hues, From reddish brown to purple and the deepest blues. And the trailing dust was silent by the way. Dusk signaled the time to quit and go home To rest the day's labors in the deep black loam. The boy stretched his aching back and yawned but twice, Glad the day was over and his labor done. Dismounting the tractor, he left it to run, And shook off the dust of his paradise.  Dusk greeted creatures the field over, Telling rabbits and field mice in deepening clover "All was now safe, come out and feed, In my soothing mantle broad and black." At the sounds of nature's bric-a-brac Eli drank in the sounds of nature's mead.  Enraptured by the muffled chirps of glee, He sat for awhile by an old oak tree, Staring placidly down the dusty road Not suspecting the fate of the endangered town. He did not know the torrent yet to drown The hamlet nor the Lotus-Eater's leader's mode. Rubbing hands dirtied by a good heart (though dirty by sight, clean in greater part) He heard behind him a far off rustle And turned around to see a distant spark: A light in the mountain showed its mark: The gods and Prometheus all in a tussle.  Though a tiny object far from our view, Seeming too distant for us to hear too, The assembly was seen and heard by Eli. It's possible to do so my good lads: Stop the motors of your costly Cad's; Listen and you'll hear much has gone awry!  Eli had not seen such assemblies before Upon that white crest of immortal lore (Though we dare say before that night His days were of work and study beyond his reach). He listened closer and heard human speech; Curious he lifted his way up the great height.  Climbing higher, the light broke the bounds, Showing a man burning a book unbound. He stepped into the clearing near the pyre, Asking, "Why are you working so late and alone On this frozen waste even the sheep disown?" The tender left to find more wood to fire.  Perplexed and taken quite aback At this silent keeper firing the black, Who rudely tended his duties that eve, With not even a greeting or care for a friend, Eli had never seen the like and was quite chagrined. Yet he persisted and he did not take his leave. He waited for the man's soon return,| And basked in the fire's warmth, the glow and the burn; But, alas, the flame weakened and embers began to set; He feared they'd die. Subtly glancing He saw the flames tire of dancing, And shaking he looked for wood to get.  Frantically searching, to no avail, He looked for fuel: the scarp was cleaned and pale; He saw some pages from a tattered blue book And tossed them on the withering red coal In hope to preserve the light on the knoll! The impatient flames then leapt with a hook.  The pages in air were snatched to the embers And might have rested on the glowing timbers, There was hardly any life or breath, And the book would have remained alive, unread, Were it not for the flame from the fire's bed Which struck from below to offer life in death.  A burst, a boom, a frightful resonance, Froze the youth, Eli, in an awesome trance. Flames grew over his head to treetop heights And threatened to burn the crowns around And even then it browned the snow white ground. The hamlet below saw even then those heavenly lights.   Eli stared at the scorching inferno; Feigning to leave, he saw assemblies within glow, Dimming the blinding hues of reds and white: He saw his village, a theft in the square; He saw rape and pillage scorch, indiscriminate care: Lotus-Eaters would fire the world that night! He wiped his eyes in guarded disbelief. A panorama of the morrow's grief Swept before him as would an unsheathed knife Cutting in twain tongues of fire from light. Then, behold! Midst this inferno in the night Stood the apparition of eternal life.  Midst the seething waves of burning heat Stood tall and solemn Pandora's help meet. Aye! It was Prometheus of our Golden Age, Whose drapery of sheer white Damask cloth Wavered in a gale of gassy froth, While beneath him still burned that awesome page.  Prometheus beckoned Eli forward Into the coals fed by the morrow's charred. Eli's heart thumped and his temples thundered, Finding no retreat from the lapping flame. "Eli, Eli, come hither into fame," Echoed the rapture of peoples encumbered. "Come to me son; you must not fear me!" Urged the voice from the Hellish possibility. Aren't you feared Lucifer; what do you want?" Queried the boy. The Titan cried, "Come here! Come, show me your trust. You I must endear; Compare mine not to hell's fiendish haunt!"  The voice was strong and sweet to Eli's ear. Enraptured, Eli drew ever nearer Wrapped in an invisible white swaddling, Warming his soul like unto no heat Not like fire from Satan, a falsehood and cheat. The magnetic charge drew being to being.  Like an apparition himself the boy slipped Over to his fiery host and his hand gripped The hand of the holy Titan of light. "Your faith is good; your soul shall not be burned," The Titan said, as curtains of flames churned All around the hallow core of heavenly light.  "I feel not the feared heat of your great flame!" Cried Eli, in disbelief, as he became One without body, yet with nerves feeling Every grief and despair which betide The sufferings of hate below which deride The doomed to a pit without a hope of healing.   For from below his feet, from a gaping hole, Streamed ghostly revelations of death's toll: Past, future, and present at one sighting. And around him swirled a dizzy portent Of things begun in the passing present, Showing people and beasts going into hiding. "It is not my flame you have entered, Eli, But the fuel of the wicked who lies Burning in the horrors of his own crime; Fear not, good lad, your heart is pure and clean And cannot be tainted by what you have seen," Said Salvation's eternal Paradigm.  "You, Eli, have seen all that I disdain, The true collection of all that I find bane," Said Prometheus with lightening candor. "Can you now see the effects of faithless fastings?" Eli cried, "But these bleak passings Were not my doing; this is not my gore!"  "How is it that I stand accused this day?" Cried Eli in every mortal agony. The Titan replied, "It is not hollow shells Which I accuse, but that of the body! I, your judge, shall judge everybody, One and all, you are my multitude, my cells. "And just as your soul now feels heaven's wrath, Your day comes when this signal shall telegraph Through every part of your people's souls. Here! I show you the happening, to wit: Put your eyes on all the wrongdoings writ In this book, awaiting the loathsome coals.'  Eli shuddered as it all came to him, While words echoed with a deafening din, From the good Titan atop his flaming log. "Now tell me, do you know the spiteful and the wrong; Do you know how to good belong?" Asked the Titan, holding his decalogue.  "Aye! It is sad, but true," sighed the young Eli. "Good is found after wandering where evils lie!" The Titan's bronzed fist unwrapped a scroll, From whence he read the ten righteous laws Which would lead Eli from Hell's grasping claws. "Now," the Titan said, "you have eaten of the good role."  "But these commandments I honor; they are my tools; There was no need to repeat those ten rules, Since I knew already the way to Salvation!" Cried Eli, alarmed at the blessings and curses of the Decalogue. "You may know this humble list I've cataloged, But ," the Titan complained, "These precepts your people shun!"  "They started a fire which will soon burn your soul, As a cancer from an infected mole, On your innocent, tender skin.. Unless you rally the good in your kind To oppose the Evil in that book I signed. Stop the infectious cancers of sin!  "Your body shall not obtain Salvation's Womb Until it is cleansed of the wicked, the doom, The agony of the Abyss below. Go! Toss off the Lotus-Eaters and thieves; Shed them as you would burn Autumn leaves; Be quick, for Hell's fingers are spreading aglow."  "But how can one stop them, my Lord; must man once again kill And Crusade as in the aeons before; has not death had its fill? Is this God's cause? Must we stop blood with shedding more blood?" Argued the confused youth. "Can't you see the dead?" Replied the Titan: "It is as I've past said, "The dead condemned themselves, frozen down there in the mud."  "Here now, can you feel the wind of the future blow?" Then a slight wind over the book began to flow, Making certain pages turning glowing red, Hotter than the tip of a fire brand. "Run now, across the world; show me good's hand: Grasp the living from the fire, the living from the dead."   Then the flames died, leaving Eli alone, but free, To seek the living among the dead.   e-mail Please beam me back up to Maravot's_Index.html Please send me on to Maravot's Poetry_for_People3.2html: Part II of the Prometheid, entitled "The Dog Killer" Please send me on to Maravot's Poetry_for_People 3.3html: Part III of the Prometheid, "Eli's Search for the funny bald men." Please send me on to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People_3.4html: Part IV of the Prometheid, "Eli's journey up the river Styx." Please send me on to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People_3.5html: Part V of the Prometheid, "The Redemption of Anna." Please send me on to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People_3.6html: Part VI of the Prometheid, "Spiteful Timon." Please send me on to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People_3.7html: Part VII of the Prometheid, "The War." Please send me on to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People_3.8html: Part VIII of the Prometheid, "Impressions of Cambria." Please send me to Maravot's Poetry_for_People.html Please send me to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People2.html Please send me to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People4.html, some poetry for creatures and kids. Please send me to Maravot's_Poetry_for_People5.html, a story from ~1972 about Ivan Ivanovitch and his terrible robots. Please send me to Maravot's_Romance_of_Anais.html, a story of Camelot never revealed before. Launched 10.12.97; updated 11.1.97; 5.31.99; 5.27.2000; 3.16.05; 3.27.05; 5.29.14 Copyright © 1964-2014 Mel Copeland. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1964-2014 Maravot. All rights reserved.