Searching for Eloisa’s Nun

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned;" 

“Eloisa to Abelard”

Alexander Pope

I’ve seen through the pages, I’ve heard behind words,

the insane echo of Father Time’s surge, 

sensational news, just witches and fear, 

steroids and terror, crusades far and near.

feudal fueling of futility’s despot,

I fight for nothing as my ancestors taught.

shift consciousness, expand us and evolve?

what a ruinous riddle to have to solve.

my mind screams and shouts but a single thought:

how happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

must I cry for the kids of Chenegai

as their true value Boston justified?

yet political rooks cannot be blamed

that the NRA is greater than they,

that in the global board Hobbes still holds sway.

happiness is all I have ever sought!

but empathy blackens the sunny sky,

or lies of blindness sear my mind with lye,

I envy your rest in virginal rock,

the world forgetting, by the world forgot.

how did you grasp Lancelot’s holy prize,

unaware as all my searches went awry?

oblivion, nirvana, villain, hero,

maybe it’s the perfectness of zero…

ignorance is the path to the divine!

unless, it’s cultivated by design?

I must study your path, chart your pathology,

I know it’s entombed in your psychology,

and perchance in this monastery find

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

aren’t such prayers denials of Nietzsche’s truth?

do I have the strength to live beyond proof?

to fight for joy, and to enjoy the fight,

accept failure as mortality’s right?

to be responsible for humankind,

to paint beauty with blackened skies, a sign

of the Advent of empathy’s reign seen.

I don’t need to enter and dream your dream,

of reality neglected, of hope confined,

each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned.