Sandalwood

In another time it might have been
The fig tree under which the Buddha sat
Or the pulpit from which great caesars reigned
Or the sword in the hands of many a visionary rebel

In another place, it might have spoken
Of Hannibal’s army as it crossed the alps
Of the last stone affixed in Hadrian’s wall
Of incomparable love quilled on an Elizabethan scroll

Yet now it remains forlorn in the corner
And speaks no more, not of armies nor love
Of nothing, its voice stolen by the tides of time
And passed on without hesitance to abler minds

Its grain is worn, cracked and at points removed
A black mail surrounds its most visible side
As if to say, “Within, there sleeps a resting God,
Who will awake once more in a surge of lightning”

And will speak again, in a time as distant
As the day that fig first stretched its roots
As the moment Hadrian dreamed of his great divide
And set the first stone upon its righteous mortar

And we are left to wonder, as it stands quite silently
If the forgotten speaker will indeed speak again
For the black mail is but cold metal, uncertainty
Nothing more than a veil, nothing less than a cage.