First Things RSS Feed - Charles Gordon Rex

I Know Not the Secret

Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:00:00 -0400

I call, but my finest thoughts come not out of their sanctum.
Yet when I am silent, they quietly open the door
And come to stand by my side. And I welcome them and rejoice
That they have come, for I know not the secret of their hiding places.

Continue Reading »

The Prodigals

Sun, 01 Jun 1997 00:00:00 -0400

I hope to kill the fatted calf somehow,
Before its youth is gone, and in its stead
There stands a lean and empty-uddered cow
From whom all festiveness has fled;
Before its innocence, naiveté,
Has, from neglect, been changed to dull, morose,
Unfeeling gloom that holds all joy at bay,
And with its bones it pierces skin drawn close.

Continue Reading »

The Last Man

Sat, 01 Feb 1997 00:00:00 -0500

Restrained no more, the last rebelling man,
Alone as he had always wished to be,
Sole monarch of himself, with not a clan,
Nor tribe, not state, nor nation left that he,
Protesting, must obey, has sat him down
Upon the last green acreage of sod
And woven of the pliant grass a crown
To show the rotted dead that he is God. To show the dead his is the only face;
His thought the only consciousness; his eye
The only judge of substance or o space;
His skull the only congruence with sky.
And singing loud his praise he spends his breath.
Extinguishing the universe in death.

Continue Reading »