The Tome

I was made from sweat and the flesh of a tree

With turpentine mixed into walnut-oil blood

And then set free, with polished form and chiselled line,

To be made perfect by the world ahead.

I shone in the reflected light of timeless lives,

Whispering to the restless might of captives everywhere

And to mothers at the funerals of long departed sons;

Singing to lovers in the first thrall of their affairs

As crowds rose up to my recollection.

Yet my face was flayed by a changing wind,

My flesh cut into, the bloody best of me displayed;

A call to arms and to the masses in a time I was unmeant for.

My disfigurement became a compliment to war,

My words brought home in the pockets of empty jackets

And set on the graves of yet more sons.

I was an old joke then, expiring in drifting smoke

And the fading world of fire and laughter;

Features spoiled beneath scarred skin

And left with only breaths of remembrance.

Now some parody of me, with pigmented blood, remains

And bare bones still reflected in the glare of time.