Alexander Jones
Jon Tribble Memorial Winner
When her foundation stones were laid,
With Heaven’s vault concealed from sight
Of those beneath the stygian shade,
The Earth slept sickly; throes of plight
Still racked her shores like pangs of birth,
And Death’s cold hands did swim the firth
As tendrils cast from Hades’ Hall,
To cloak all lands in umbral pall —
But revelation yet was nigh
To finding form with hammer-fall:
A pillar to support the sky.
For though a din of blood and blade,
Which festered like a leper’s blight,
Concealed beneath black clouds arrayed
To plunge all life in endless night,
Made Gaia strain in wretched dearth
And spread its slaughter on the Earth,
Man was not born to ever crawl;
Winds rose in an unyielding call —
Commanding as a voice on high
To rend the dread nocturnal shawl:
“A pillar to support the sky!”
From violent blindness they were bade:
“Arise from Chaos, reach the heights!”
So stone by stone the builders strained,
Directing all their blood-born might
To harness strength that strife had sown,
And build toward Order with each groan;
Their war-hewn limbs of iron hard
Did ever higher raise the shard,
Which bright against the swirling eye
Of darkness pressed its piercing guard —
A pillar to support the sky.
Just as a seam of fabric frayed
Does split as knife-edge presses tight,
The grisly storm fell in cascade,
Revealing all Celestial light
Which had so long languished alone,
But now at last could have a throne,
A plinth — a port for sunbeams starred
To cleanse the Earth so deeply marred,
And bygone Chaos clarify,
With light of Heaven now unbarred:
A pillar to support the sky —
The firmament! Elysian glade,
Below the sphere of Caelus bright,
With light-fall like a vast arcade
‘Cross meadows spilling far in flight
Was built by hands haft-hardened, who
Had weathered all the shard pierced through;
But now tools slipped from weary hands,
And blinking eyes beheld what spanned
From Tellus out of view, sun-high
With swirling white acanthi fanned:
A pillar to support the sky.
From dusk was born that relic age,
Renascent Earth, all souls’ delight
Was passed to us, the heirs who strayed
In aliment of our birthright;
For none nursed by the daylight new
Could match the might of war-forged few
From Nyx’s cloak, or Sol’s command
To reach beyond our state, and stand,
And buttress with resounding cry
What held the heavens in its span:
A pillar to support the sky.
Now sacred column stands decayed,
Grown over, some forgotten shrine
Of memories lost, with vein-stone greyed,
Neglected by its neophytes,
Who stroll naïve beneath the arms
That freed the aching Earth from harm;
The sanctuary walls are cracked,
And fury yearns to counteract
The bane of all the Tenebrae,
That spear which sundered shade’s attack:
A pillar to support the sky.
I see like prisoners displayed
For time’s tribunal, robed in white,
The war-born, by their heirs betrayed,
And held with iron chains to bind
Rough hands, the wage of carnage past,
Whose scars were bent to raise the mast
Which forced back night’s oppressive hold,
And let the trembling sky unfold
As absolution, realized:
To lift with violence controlled
A pillar to support the sky.
Lament! Their steelen strength has passed;
Their strife-sown vehemence outcast,
And shadows now the world enfold
With longing for their reign of old,
While we, unwitting wards deny
Our refuge rests on their stronghold:
A pillar to support the sky.