An Athenian Reminisces by Vassar Miller
I love this poem. I discovered it through my aunt when we first started discussing poetry at our Friday breakfasts, about two years ago. It provides some food for thought.
An Athenian Reminisces
By Vassar Miller
Yes, I remember Paul, his ugly face
Alive with joy, his stooping shoulders seeming
Straighter somehow as if his words had driven
A rod of iron down his spine. “My friends,
The Unknown God to whom you rear an altar
I now declare!” So, he proceeded to
Domesticate the Mystery. He’s dead
You say, beheaded by that madman Nero.
No doubt he scarcely felt the blade strike through
The bone so padded was he with conviction.
Courageous man! Yet now that I am old
I’m not so sure that one can be as sure
As Paul. At any rate, I’ve never caught
The Unknown God at leisure in His rooms.
Nor spied Him in the middle of His labors,
Although my bruise-bewildered brain would like to.
Whether or not He makes the crooked paths straight,
I’ve had to hack mine out as sorry-best
I might. Christ died for us, Paul taught? How strange
A god should think a man’s requirements so
Excessive. All that I need is space,
Not so much larger, really, than a cat’s
[Or so a deity might measure it]
To ease my cramped limbs in the sun a little.
Well, well, the names of God are beautiful—
Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Mithra, Astarte,
Isis, now Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—
So many screens behind which he eludes us.
And though stout-hearted Pauls may claim the Quarry,
Pet of their pieties, they may as well
Drag home with them a shadow by the neck.
