It was I who screamed until hoarse and exhausted,
Who pleaded with the fools - that they know not what they do.
That all that shields us from the scalding rain
Beyond is the roof of this place you seek to demolish.
My raised voice echoed endlessly, but was heard by none.
In my apoplexy, shuffling forms at my periphery grab my attention.
I turn my head to a wing of the temple that I had yet
To see, or perhaps had yet to manifest within this vision.
Terror gripped me, and for the first time in my paltry and wretched
Humanity, I began to grasp this place,
And why it stood here with such ancient purpose.
Before me, I beheld the perfumed halls, not just a single chamber,
But many each with their own distinctive idol at their centre,
And each with their own accompaniment of
Zealous priors engaged busily in construction.
The halls, as I saw them,
Were mere antechambers to this temple,
Each linked to this place by a constellation of passageways.
The temple's stalwart roof
Sheltered them too from the unending storms.
Yet each hall spat forth fools.
Fools who would amble blindly into the sprawling
Nave, and who would lose themselves in the orgy.
Each would eat the, and hammer impetuously at the base of the columns
Without compunction,
And without cognizance that the tumbling
Roof would inevitably crush all beneath.
What drew these fools to tear with nails
And teeth at the womb which sustained them?
Were they truly beings of ill will and orgiastic masochism?
Or, tragically, were they instead fully-rounded individuals
With justification, rationale and deliberation in their actions?
Is it not after all true that each human possesses the tools to
Invoke unimaginable grotesquery,
Or to be a shimmering light to the world,
And all possibilities between,
And that the fine dividing those domains
Is oscillatory, nebulous and unarticulated?
In an instant, I am pulled from my reverie,
As their robes fall from their bodies, revealing their form.
And I see that all are me.