Speaker

I watched a man pound the pulpit,
promote Socratic discourse, and say
nothing at all of the way forward,
so rooted,
so cement-shoed in
the past that
perhaps the very
thought of the future
was too much to bear.

There is a joke here, somewhere,
about a man casting his
shadow on a cave wall, but
I can not find it.

Instead, what strikes me is this:
an extreme eloquence,
a urgent rhythm,
a remaking of the past,
a refusal to move into
an ever-unsure future.