The Task of Scholars

If I may venture what the task of scholars

May be, giving due reflection, I'd say :

Make helium the archive so the weight

Of all those thousand years of knowledge, light

As feathers ; which together, form two wings

Which from this earthly realm may fly as high

As spirit yearns ; now that is intellect

At height of all its powers, serving soul.

For staying pond'rous with its weight, and bound

With chains of rote, which ill-enlightened, repeat

Rules, while understanding none, is no

Especial virtue, and may well confuse

The roles of logic and the spirit, which,

The former serving latter, finds its right

And elevated place, but if the spirit

To the mind, the mediocre mind

Of rote-learned boxes, is so bound, then all

The wisdom of the ages overturned

Is for the sake of what should serve! But when

The mind, its wings of knowledge primped and preened,

Can venture out beyond the known-already

Realm, and catching halo of the stellar

Flames, return to share its glowing gems,

Why such a fire blue-illuminated

Mind we ready "genius" give its name!

For wisdom finds its soul in knowing all

The knowledge consciousness recalls is but

The skein upon the surface of the deep;

But down below, in fathoms, 'neath the waves

Which superficial scholars overeager

Watch, is where the secret movement rolls

And finds momentum. There the roots of knowledge

Writhe, and there the genius may in wrangling

Find a frame to which the feathers of

Already lightened knowledge may be pinned,

To form those wings the spirit longs to soar

So high above the clouds with. Knowing this,

We strip the image of a jailer cruel

From knowledge, finding liberation there

Instead, and let the archive form a feast

Of souls, the voices of the ancestors

Returned to dance with us through books as books

Of shadows rendered, summon spirits from

The open leaves of bound-together trees

Of knowledge. For such magic is the reason

I do sit in stacks and archives, just

As shamans sit upon the mounds and graves,

A vision-seeking, so a wizard wisdom

Seeks within the pressed-to-page enchantment

Of the gallery of captured souls

Who sigil-etched into our grimoires speak.

And if you fear exegesis to call

Such necromancy, why the point of all

These otherwise quite pointless scribbles , you

Have altogether missed! For life!, the deeper

Life that we call death must serve, to green

Our e'er-becoming barren meadows with

Fermented saps of wisdom brewed within

The deeps, and such is honor to invoke.