Epiphany
We knelt; and that’s the part that always gets told
or gets painted, or the painting’s lines are read
for comment on the metaphor - and while each
figure figures for something before, like Greek
from Phoenician - no one thinks of who we were,
we three, and what it took for us to return.
And who doesn’t like to anoint and give gold;
who’d not give his most stunning cabochon and
bring forth the holy censer to swing those scents
swirling eternal ward, click….ca-click, ca-click;
while holding carefully his sleeve of gold silk
or carefully woven Kente or purple
dyed in the wool; while all of the lesser folk
look on in awe of us three looking on, awed
by this changeling who has now resolved the Way.
That’s the easy part; point of metaphor,
gist of the story. Or, the vanishing point?
As Magus, I would want you to know at which
Caravansary we three broke fast and asked
if our Court Seers meant to keep from us something
they knew would bring danger, could well lose us our
lives, our lands? Or worse, our Eunuchs conspiring
with snarky subalterns to denigrate, to
execute us as heathen emissaries?
How will it fare, for us each, when we arrive?
Him with his piles, the other, his cough, and me?
Still, we three repack and say nary a word
about the star which now seems to have vanished.
How long since we sat, safe and strong on our throne?
I worry about what I know I must tell.
Gerard Furey taught high school English courses for forty years. He lived through grade school Atom bomb drills, high school expulsion, steel mill labor, learning his Draft numbers on TV, and thankfully having children and grandchildren. Having survived the 60’s he will aver that, yes, History does repeat
itself.
