Poem, so naked and so windswept and so free,
standing on broken marble, whispering
into the pit of the oracle, will you
help me to gather where I’ll make my home,
during this lingering pilgrimage?
All of its steps are sacrifices!

Out of dreams, jesters drift, the world creators.
Some dour prince says that he knew them well, but all the clowns
laugh at those who think they know; true knowledge rises
out of knowledge broken.

Oh, to be is simple, sweet prince:
what makes it hard is asking what to be. And that is all we do.
Whatever pursuit a river has, or a jungle tower,
that’s the kind I’d like. I work with bells, petals and
pure atmosphere, tinkering while butterflies hobble
through the crumples and hard sighs, divining where flowers are.
In these valley meadows, I have led my flock
of sheep and stared at the sun. And a speaking
slab of rock has filled me with fear.

Where is eternal Pan now? Where has his flute gone?
I would have perhaps been better off as a lustful satyr,
loafing into churches and guzzling the wine
right before the incantation. Either that
or a hundred arms waving on a mountaintop.
Pacing around the sunken woods, I halt and speak to myself.
The twenty rivers of this powerful Spring
make me ponder the company of shepherds I have been.

And in the midst of that encircling company—
of children and singers, of workers and thinkers.
—I too am in Arcadia. And my memory will raise
a broken flute to the mouth of the wind.

About the AuthoR

David Albert Solberg is a sophomore at Kent State University double majoring in English and art history. His poems “Et in Arcadia Ego” and “Love in Winter” are meditations on the spiritual desire to find one’s origin and live by its emotion. He thanks his mother, father and the small lake near his home in Pennsylvania for their love. He was published in the 2014 issue of Brainchild.