Time pERFECT

Paradise Lost: Adam and Eve Driven out of Paradise 1824–27 John Martin

Time is fleeting
We panic for perfection
A desperate search
Veins pound blood
To flexed necks and
Tight faces

It must be! Yet where?
I’ve checked up here!
I’ve gone down there!
I’ve searched every lair,
of this labyrinth! Every stair!
How can this be fair?

But the walls know
They’ve seen this all before
The restless one, in pursuit.
It’s not the searcher who hunts
It is he who’s hunted.
By what? By who?
That very thing that he denies himself to.
The one word that he cannot bear
The word that would send him into despair
Fear

Fear that its all true
That he’s broken and lazy
He’s flawed and imperfect
Fear that that the joke is on him
That he is his biggest problem

But the walls know it
Every pursuer is finally caught
Forced to see the thing he was running from
And after the shrieks and terror
A new journeyman appears in the lair
One lighter and wiser too
One that is free to live and love all life has

As he leaves the labyrinth, he says one thing,
“Thank you.”