The Man Who Walks Again
My journey through time
When Time first drew the curtain wide, And set the stage where fate must bide, He came, imperial, stern of brow, The laurel ‘round his victor’s vow. By Tiber’s stream he stalked the world, With eagle crest and banners furled. Julius, dread to Gaul and Gael, He heard the cry, “The Ides prevail.” Yet Death, no end, he passed the veil, And waited in the cosmic gale.
The wheel turned on. In Spanish sun, Where Ronda’s blood-red rivers run, He rose anew, with cloak and blade, To dance where beasts and men are weighed. A matador, with eyes like steel, Who made the crimson silence real. The cheers, the clash, the fatal flight, The horn, the thrust, the bloom of night Yet when his breath did cease once more, The stars again unlatched their door.
Mid shadowed stones and mossy glades, Where whispering oak the sunblock shades, He walked the Byrne in robes of green, A Druid ‘mong the worlds unseen. He spoke to fire, and wind, and tide, To spirits bound and those who bide. He carved in ogham fate’s long rune, And vanished ‘neath the Hunter’s moon. But Time, relentless, bore him still Another soul for Earth to fill.
Beneath a sky of ancient hue, Where mammoth roared and north winds blew, He hunted, grunted, loved, and fought The last of kin, a dying thought. His hands were rough, his brow was wide, A fireless night, no kin beside. Yet in his eyes, a haunted spark Some echo of a Roman dark. Extinct? Nay, Time hath other plans For shifting souls and mortal spans.
Now saddle-worn on desert clay, Where cacti guard the break of day, He rides beneath the mesa tall, A cowboy of the Chapparral. He sings to stars, he speaks to dust, He lives by code, he dies by trust. A pistol low, a glance askance— He knows this world, he knows the dance. But when his mount grows still and cold, He wakes again, no longer old.
And lo! On ruddy Martian sand, Where none but few have dared to stand, A crimson dawn crowns helmeted brow— The second son of Southland now. He plants the flag, he speaks with Earth, A whisper of a higher birth. His mind recalls the Tiber's gleam, The bull's last breath, the Druid’s dream. Each life a verse, each death a rhyme He walks eternal, soul through time.
O Soul! O pilgrim swift and deep, Thy path is long, thy truths shall keep. Though flesh may fall and stars may die, Thy spirit climbs the endless sky. For Time shall spin and worlds may fade, Yet thou, reborn, remade, arrayed, Wilt find once more the call, the flame, And rise anew, with different name.
~Roald Bartholomew
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