Renewal

by David Blalock

The judgment refrained,
Its wings are regained!
And the Unicorn soars to new heights.

         No longer jet-black, now
         The beast glitters gold.
         As the new follows old,
         'Nother life does unfold.

A change in men's views:
The Unicorn renews
Where before he had brought only pain.

Each thing has its time,
Change in reason and rhyme
May make different those things thought the same. 

The beast little cares for explaining.
Its blood is hot with regaining
The power he'd thought been denied him.
The winged form soars through the shadows
Through the dark and light of tomorrows,
 From the ends of earth to today,
Returning along the same way.
Weightless, the Unicorn wanders
 From one side of reason to corners
And alleys of conscience thought lost;
Now again his domain.

Soon, its bestial reason returns.
To the lost and found it turns.
It considers the value of flight
And the freedom it knows during night.
It considers the loss of that freedom,
Its feelings and thoughts of the kingdom
Where its shade exists overpowering
The minds and emotions of cowering
Masses of humanity.

And it settles to perch midst the umbrage of church.
In returning to birthplace, can see the mirth
Intrinsic in intuitive fear.
It knows now it's immortal
And lifeless.

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.

E-mail:jrlthran@memphisonline.com