Maze, Monster, Man

A poem in three scenes

The interest lies at the center. There the monster

lives, or waits, one bloodshot eye on the entrance,

tail in a half-coil covering the exit. The walker

who makes it this far knows his sum of debts

to Earth, the done and undone acts that led him

to this place. He finds the center by degrees,

through a hundred guesses that look, to the builder

of the maze, like intelligence, but to the walker

signal necessity, belief that there must be

a reason to keep going.

Along the way, old bones,

a clutter of white sticks and balls—tales

of dismemberment—point upward, nowhere.

The walker, last man alive, moves among them,

exhales his thousand dreams, breathes in coldness.

He treads in the maze’s spare daylight

like a shadow that has lost its owner.

At the center the monster is hungry as always.

It doesn’t believe it is hideous, trapped for good;

cannot see how exile has charred its mind,

twisted its body. It lives out the existence it can:

the snapped neck, a gorging, a relief.

(Someone always comes, frightened and pale,

incapable of resistance, even for a moment.)

It has been here before the gods. Would prefer,

no doubt, an ordinary life: perhaps as a

young bull looking over the new lot of heifers,

mooing softly in bovine Greek; or, tanned,

a farmer haying in the fields, vigorous as a horse.

And yet, it has no will. Like all real monsters,

it cannot become anything—neither self nor other.

The curse of its twoness holds it. It waits,

Sure only in its immaculate darkness.

At the fête the boy enters the maze carefully,

shyly, aware that something awaits him inside.

The sign says, “Enter at your own risk!” A dare

impossible to pass up. The maze is made

of bushes, so high the boy can’t see their tops,

so green the small leaves shine. He steps

in, finds himself alone, though he still hears

the celebrants’ voices. Before long, he wears

the cloak of the hero, heavy and light at once.

He goes in deeper

(the voices fall silent). His heart lifts, surprised

at its own courage. He moves toward the center

surely, purposefully, holding an imaginary sword.

Arrived, he finds what the hero has always found:

The monster’s chair, empty; another sign, “Sit”;

before the chair the final horror: a mirror.