Truth is, you don’t want somebody calm,
Somebody who comprehends the larger
Truth. Someone like that lacks motivation.
Stoicism is good. The stoics were made to rule.
Theirs is a ruler’s religion. Just ask Aurelius,
Scourge of those creepy atheist Christians
Who refused to acknowledge Roman gods.
Because the calm of the stoics is deceptive, brutal
When it feels its role requires it to be so,
You can count on a stoic to get things done,
Even if occasional slaughter is involved.
But somebody truly calm, not out to conquer,
Save, or enlighten anyone, is hardly human.
You don’t want that. That won’t help you.
That long perspective sees bland erasure
Blurring every margin of every existence,
An indifference born of sinking gravity,
No hopping off the wheel of rebirth, no
Eternity of hosannas beyond mortality,
No sutras, no scriptures, no prime directive,
No redemption, no necessity. Dispassion is rare
In a ravening species self-domesticated, bred
For striving, for competing to scramble quickly
Up the sliding piles of rubble our ancestors
Raised, just to add a bit to the top of the heap.
Leave an inscription, leave a legend, a song.
Leave descendants, a fortune carved in stone,
A prophecy, a romance, an empire, a notion,
Something immortal, another damned poem.
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