Hubris
Adam Bryant Martin
Do I ask for comfort?
When the gates of Urizen are opened and the Sphinx asks her riddle, What will be my answer?
Do I admit I'm my father's son, dwelling in sin with my mother,
Cursed with hell-spawned progeny of naked, unadulterated incest?
When I find out, do I blind myself and dwell in sackcloth and ashes
While Thebes is a city divided?
I hunger to take the nails from my hands and drive my theses
Into the heartless doors of blind fate, cursing destiny
That took my soaring dreams and trampled them on cobblestones.
Do I bear my cross of glory and defy the king,
Determined to bury Polyneices my brother, whose only sin
Was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Then, I defy you, stars! The edict is a cruel one!
Under this law is death. Treasure is where one's heart is.
If there is a magician who conjures my fate
And leeringly directs my lingering, hopeless tragedy,
Then I despise him.
Then again...who among us narrates the tale,
And who lives it out?
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