If Stone Dreams

We cannot know this statue, this satyr

with his head propped on a wineskin;

we cannot know if he dreams. In fact,

none can know in spite of aeons

of looking, of examining where his hip

is eaten away, eroded as if by our eyes.

For what has been lost we are to blame,

for what has been kept to be thrown

away. He sleeps, his brow furrowed, lips

furled, he sleeps in drunken stupor and his snores

though silent still insist. The need to be

drunk, we share this need to let consciousness

go. Satyr is the mentor

of blackout. He is the Bacchus we worship

within us. Observe in time his beard has grown

into the jug as man and vessel merge.

Together they seem content. He sleeps

because the wine has been drained.

There's no more stress, nor straining for he

no longer feels his hip, his brain, this unbearable

lightness. Now stone

seems to embrace this hallowed notion

of empty, of emptying space, this erasure, this sage

trace we sometimes leave behind. He is both

absent and present, a fading figure in a picture,

familiar, yet unrecognized,

                    ourselves at another age.