Sol,
In-forever-victus,
holds his head very low right now.
He’s crouching down there by the horizon,
or safe in his curtained cave at night.
He wakes up in twilight
and goes to bed still in twilight,
without troubling daytime,
and, like the other crepuscular creatures,
the foxes and badgers and so on,
is skittish:
here comes a cloud —
WHOOSH —
Where’s he gone?
They don’t know,
Sol In-forever-victus,
anything that they don’t know.
They don’t know that one day you’ll rise;
you’ll climb the stairs up the side
of that great big blue dome
to the very top,
and you’ll shine out aha and burn them.
They don’t know but I do.
They think you’re craven
congenitally.
I know that circumstances —
oh man, circumstances —
can make even a great person huddle
down by the horizon,
and fail to warm his fellows,
or provide any succour or solidarity,
or even some mornings, to nod
and say hello good morning.
I know, Sol In-fucking-forever-victus,
that one day,
and that day’s not far away now,
you’ll have shaken off those pesky clouds,
and you’ll grin down from the very apex
of your cupola,
while you help us grow plants for food,
and warm our skin,
and you’ll be so proud to think
that while once you were a horizon lurker,
and a sneak who was no help to anyone,
yet once you’d had enough
and gathered your strength,
you climbed up all those stairs
with our hands on your back,
and shone light on everything,
Sol In-forever-victus.
Errata 