The Myth of Atlas

The weight of the world
on my shoulders.
I want to tell the story again.
----

1.

I want to tell your story.
I want to live your story,
                      your dreams.
I want to feel your sorrow,
               see your stars.

I want to tell the story
as if it's a wildfire
spreading across our plains,
and becomes a legend on the horizon.

I want to tell the legend
             until the legend is vast,
             until we forget it was our story,
             until we believe its mythical powers.

I believe our stories are mythical.
I believe all stories are mythical.
I want to tell the myth,
                  the story again.

2.

I kneel on the right,
bracing my left,
shoulders flat,
head bowed--
expentant;
Atlas the giant
reborn
to bear the story of
your world
in silent witness.

A poet's gift.
Atlas's curse.
We tell the story.
Again.

3.

Atlas is a poet.

A poet sees the pain,
seizes the hurt,
feels the weight of it
crushing,
and carries it on her bent back
to the end of time.

Atlas carries the world,
holding it,
feeling it,
loving it,
breathing it in,
as if it is his own.

The giant he is,
he carries with his brute force
and caresses with his deftest touch unfelt,
all the joys and sorrows
of the world.

Atlas
on his broad shoulders,
unending strength,
carries what others cannot.
Atlas is my brother.

Atlas is a poet.

4.

I stand witness
to our times.

This house of
life and change,
this playfield of
passion and fire,
this temple of
sanctity and sacrifices,
this garden of
blooms and thorns,--
yearn to be
witnessed
and be told to times and generations
not yet passed.
I stand witness to
this world
where cries of suffering
empties one of empathy,
where mourning of cultures
deceased
is in chorus with
triumphant marches of new revolutions.

Someone must remember and hold on.

Someone must feel every pang,
                must sing every note,
         and must see the vivid colors
                                         of fire burning the woman in Kabul
                                 and the fire of passion
                              in two lovers' burning kisses,
         and witness them,
                be tormented by them,
                be taken up by the tidal surge,
                must surrender to them
                and feel the truth in them.

If a story isn't heard,
how can it be retold?
Who would lament for the splendors of Babylon,
if none witnessed
that it was
looted, gutted and burnt to the ground?

5.

The wonders of the world
wondrous,
the little wildflowers
wondrous,
the light of the setting sun,
--a noose,
getting tighter around
her swanly neck
-- that is wondrous;
the golden dawn shining
on the hopeless drunk
lying in his filth,
that is wondrous,
moonlight encircling the shadows
of friends,
that is wondrous.

And wonder is nothing
if not witnessed.
Wonder loses its myth
if no one bears the burden of
its beauty.

6.

To hold on to the world,
to love its sad beauty,
to witness it throb with life,
to believe in its myth,
to carry it to the next people,
and to retell it as it all happened--
coated in the power of myth:
if that isn't the heaviest burden,
Atlas's broad shoulders wait to know
what mightier challenge there is.

I witness this burden.
Atlas is my brother.
The poet searches for the myth.

I want to tell the story again.