LOOK BEHIND THE OAK, TO FIND AN ACORN
by Houssein Afghani
The truth exists and reflects itself within us,
Without sex and without gender
Yet it dominates our nature.
Existing from the ancient past into an unknown future.
How truth does play and dance within one's mind
Holding my mind open in pentameter
Shakespearean verse contrived to rhyme.
A disciplined resolution in meter.
When I'm speaking about the truth within
The object is love and the subject is sin.
Recognizing the substance reviewing the form
Seek within for the rare while avoiding the norm.
For truth overcomes my cynical me,
A powerful image my ego can't see.
Overcoming all doubt, ending all fears,
The lies we'll shut out, since truth's without peers,
To understand the possibilities of man
One sees a trillion sperm,
And only one may attend
The dance of birth and mate the sacred egg,
While all the other sperm are dancing
And ancient well known jig of death,
Now having lost their only race,
As nature's excess, they lose no face.
Each sperm perforce will live and die without remorse.
For each and every single sperm contains the force
To fertilize, and then sustain an entire life,
And know the joy of being first, to win its wife.
Man is an unresolvable god for these cells,
And to which these tiny microscopic cells aspire.
Unresolvable dimensionally,
But capable of higher claims.
The brother sperm by their death confirm,
While seeming to refute the greater truth,
Which is no cosmic jest,
Now unrefuted, and only I,
The god this tiny sperm created, can attest
That man also aspires to be a god, and cannot rest.
Just as these ancient genes within this
Sperm, which is my father
Aspired to be a mighty oak or cypress tree.
Should I inquire whether it be luck or destiny?
Acorns fall, and some will become scrub
And some will grow to be might oaks
And so, but for the grace of god,
I would be an acorn or a dog, or another hopeless,
hapless, human being.
(c) 1990 by Houssein Afghani, performing November 15
at Templo Theatre.