Friday, March 13, 2009

Poetry Friday - A potter shaped this little pitcher so

A potter shaped this little pitcher so.
Who knows what name in what tongue it was called,
what potions or libations it has held --
the potter may have known. We do not know.
The Holy Grail was made by human hands:
unknown, unknowing hands that never guessed
how their produce would seed crusade and quest.
Between the maker and the made the bonds
are short-lived: delicate and quickly frayed,
then cut. Then down the timestream floats the ware,
to new adventures -- talismans employed
as paperweights, and even timely fore-
casts of apocalypse become a guide
for day-to-day existence evermore.

July 1977
November 1977