Cyclic

With no target, life force ebbs,
Alone it flies.
Should Unicorn give up its quest?
If so, it dies.
Would that be best: the calm, the rest?
Or be those lies?

Stubborn beast!
Regard your existence in Light;
On it feast!
Review the resistance of Night;
Has it ceased?
Ignore the insistence of Right
and you know the curse
of bad turned worse.

Onward fly, O Unicorn
To unknown end.
Fate decides when you'll be born
To live again.
Dread birth forlorn, at dusk or morn;
Perhaps an end?

(Publ. in Our World's Favorite Gold & Silver Poems, John Campbell, editor; World of Poetry Press, 1991, p. 253; also in Who's Who in Poetry, Vol. III, John Campbell, Editor and Publisher; World of Poetry Press, 1991, p. 167)

Author's Note: I have written a series of poems around the Arabic image of the unicorn: winged and black. It represents the baser instincts in man in a way that is not conveyed by the more western unicorn. Although westerners allow that the nature of the beast can only be tamed by the innocence of a virgin, they do not address the why of that assertion. I have tried to capture that reason in these poems.

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