Samson (edited)

"The sun is within me and so is the moon"
Author: Kabir

Samson,

your hands, once famed across the Land,

and still now these centuries later,

though more for the final act performed in darkness,

than anything you ever carried out in the light…

Samson,

your hands, still embedded, minutely,

with fragments of splintered bone

from the jaw of the jackass—the rest of that body,

its flesh having long since rotted away,

the rib cage exposed as if grinning, daring Fate,

and losing the dare, obviously, rests in the desert,

a signpost to all life’s direction.

Samson,

how clearly you should have seen then,

when you still had eyes to see,

the warning implicit in your weapon,

but as you swung that beleaguered bone

and crunched the helmeted heads of the harassing

Philistine soldiers, who swung their iron swords

and dared attack you in the narrow pass,

you gave little thought to irony, I suppose.

Samson,

the flesh that covers your renowned fingers,

warm even now, ridiculed as you are,

chained and kept far from the yellow ball—

the shadows capturing your shadowed thoughts,

your memories of the light; the burnished sun,

the fire in your muscles, the firm earth beneath your feet,

not this place of darkness, of dead soil and lost eyes,

Delilah’s hands, a fever coursing still regardless

of her betrayal—flesh that has touched lips and breast,

flicked nipple, drawn blood, crushed a hand,

fired a crop, caressed a cheek, touch now

what your eyes can no longer see though you can still recall;

the images mere echoes, images that flash passed

as if flicked by a god’s nimble fingers,

and your ravaged mind, more rat now than human,

repeatedly explains to itself, as only a ravaged mind can,

how your hazel eyes, while they were still yours to admire,

have led you to this place; for in the dark, lost and mired,

you understand you forsook yourself, followed

instead the fallacy of the moon whose weight is nothing

compared to yours and whose light

is but a reflection, like the lake that reveals

but has no reality.

Yet Samson,

despite the sun and the strength it gave,

willingly, you gave the moon all your secrets,

stood proud in the darkened room, the candle dancing

in the evening breeze, and allowed the moon

to remove your strength and now

your two hands, hands that once held, caressed and fought,

rest upon the pillars of the temple

as you strive to bring everything down…

yourself, the moon

Delilah’s lingering scent and

most of all

Samson,

you seek to bury beneath the building’s rubble,

the shame of being blind when

the sun gave you all the light you ever needed.