The Making of a Prince II: A King with Too Many Names
Eyes of adamantine admiration,
Eyes of green jealousy,
And like my own of enigma;
Skin of robust splendor,
Skin of soigné plutocracy,
And like my own of harsh grating;
He had a extensive collection
Of these myriad visions
Brands and names,
Epitaphs and banners…
He had too much already
And I cannot endow him
Of a gift, of a name,
But in spite of the perplexity
Of his multitude, I knew him
And the core of his magnitude
A soul, a heart, a thousand words,
An assuaging fix, a destructive machinism,
Triumphs and defeat;
Overwhelming his names—
He was a king, he was a king.
He was a brittle glass of a king
Capable of holding many dishabille
Possessing ice and fire, fire and ice,
For candid tears and for affections
And as he meander in this shriveled globe
In the superfluity of his winding paths
The sun casts his diadem loftily
And the glass that his vessel was
Spewed a vexing prism in prance
Of its thousand shades and inflections
And the affliction was upon him
This king with many a name
Displays his scars too flagrantly
For it was more noble, as he believed,
Than his unutterable bank of grandiosity
And perhaps, in his vain rummaging
In myself: a mirror bijou of slivers
He saw himself, in a dour vantage,
His eviscerations, and faults, and errs -
A little coy prince wilted from a dream
Under the sun's duress, in the fear's chest
Juxtaposed the graves we built and exhumed:
We talked of riddles,
Gambled with death and life,
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poem by Norman Santos
Added by Poetry Lover
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