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the routine slaveries once more possess you
man and god, Buddha and Merton, those years, this hour, fold in like a dough.
the blows of the kneading fist withdraw, the times are your own.
wars, the readying of wars, the minds whose inner geometric
is an ever more complex web; conflict, games of death, checks and counters-
I leave you, your undoing, promethean doers and despoilers.
a hope?
Christ and Buddha together have fashioned a conundrum. hear it.
the hour of your despoiling is the hour of our return.
until then, the world is yours, and you are Moloch's, bound hand and foot
upon a wheel of fire.
the monk Thomas I take up in lotus hands
to place him in the eternal thought
a jewel upon my forehead.
384
THE DEBATE by Agnes Denes
Courtesy: Ruth White Gallery, New York