Atlas

for Jonathan Talbot

“...what rough beast, its hour come at last,
slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

-from “The Second Coming,” by W.B. Yeats

Arete: The classical Greek virtue of excellence in all endeavors, the refusal to accept or approve the second- rate.

"It is what it is," he says, and then
What it is must sink again
Beneath notice, sanction, approval, glee,
Below attention, to the sunless sea,
Back to being what it is.

Behind him looms the angel of his arete,
A rough bright beast that points the way,
Permits no slouching diffidence,
Beats him with the rod of excellence.
It too is what it is.

For this too is a glory road, entrained
Toward visions past this Goya land,
The rough bright beast a strategem
Conducting to eternal Bethlehem,
Where all that is is what it is.

(And infinitely more.)

View Joe Wrobel recording this poem