Brief: In Defense of the Life of Humble Service
Chris Ellery
March 5, 2023
If I were a candle, I would be liberal
with the burning of my wax and wick.
I would be the flame’s prodigal accomplice,
a midnight wastrel, a fetishist of melting.
Many a rushlight or votive aspire to shine
upon the pages of some undiscovered Dante,
some Beethoven or Mozart, quill in hand
composing a masterpiece throughout the night
to light just a little the dungeon of the skull.
They dream perhaps of illuminating maps
of a general or explorer, the parchment of
a king or statesman, a Washington or Lincoln,
ponderously scribbling bellicose speeches
to rally troops and citizens. At the very least
to beam from dusk to dawn on books and papers
of some prestigious priest scratching an eloquent
eulogy for the eternal repose of the soul
of a Churchill or a Caesar.
Well and good.
To disappear, to be used up, in such
like causes is undoubtedly providential.
I surely would not shirk if called upon
to brighten some illustrious act of history.
Indeed, I’d not decline to stay up late
with Hippocrates or Galen, or to melt away
upon the waxy altar of Thomas Becket,
or to blaze for days with eight of my cronies
in Rabbi Levy’s golden menorah.
But now, in the dead of night, the butcher’s kid
just woke up screaming from a charnel nightmare.
A grave robber has jumped in a grave to scrounge
a silver crown or two from the teeth of a banker.
And there’s a switchblade gang rolling dem bones
in the alley. I am the child of Father Dark
and Mother Night, rendered out of slaughter.
Who am I to say base uses fall beneath
the dignity of a taper, that light is squandered
on a dirty kid in need of light, that my few
short inches of string and tallow would
be wasted on a thief, or on a dicey gamble?
Retired Professor of English from Angelo State University, Chris Ellery is one of the founders of the ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton and a former poetry editor of Concho River Review. His most recent collection of poems is Canticles of the Body.
