The world ordered in chaos
The world ordered in chaos,
foreseen in dreams and omens,
spoken as oracles, swayed
almost incidentally,
a god’s affection captured
without intending, a truth
perceived without one’s knowing.
We set the myths on the side
and leave the gods’ altars bare.
We treat their world as ours,
dismal stewards throwing crumbs.
Days we take for granted pass
unrecognized, fruit rotting
in baskets, friendships squandered.
Hermes appears nonetheless.
Charon’s ferry plies the Styx.
Near Hades’ gate, gathered shades
gossip as they wait, looking
for what they thought they had, death
leaving little trace. Life’s short,
the Muses sing. Art is long.
foreseen in dreams and omens,
spoken as oracles, swayed
almost incidentally,
a god’s affection captured
without intending, a truth
perceived without one’s knowing.
We set the myths on the side
and leave the gods’ altars bare.
We treat their world as ours,
dismal stewards throwing crumbs.
Days we take for granted pass
unrecognized, fruit rotting
in baskets, friendships squandered.
Hermes appears nonetheless.
Charon’s ferry plies the Styx.
Near Hades’ gate, gathered shades
gossip as they wait, looking
for what they thought they had, death
leaving little trace. Life’s short,
the Muses sing. Art is long.
Educated as an architect and planner, John Parman is an editorial adviser to an international design firm headquartered in San Francisco. He writes for Arcade, the Seattle design magazine, and serves as an advisor to the West Coast edition of Architect’s Newspaper and Room One Thousand, a publication of the graduate students at U.C. Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. With Elizabeth Snowden and Richard Ingersoll, he founded and published the award-winning quarterly, Design Book Review, from 1983 until 1999, when they gave it to California College of the Arts. (DBR went out of print in 2002.)
