Calm appeared, his soul stopped

The Ancestors Explain How Envy Grew:

He grew in the way of genius, no charts

showing where he ended and the world began,

how cities figure in the jagged sweep of cornfields,

endless thousands of shouts up into the evening,

listening to the future speaking, like the old man

in the schoolyard, a stranger by the wishing pond

in the woods, or dogs that stand up like men in hats—

these the Corinthian signs he mistook

for an alphabet giving the right to molest children.

Now wisdom is sour rubbing medicine pasted

over nightmares, not the proper wealth of an old man,

the arms of his neighbors around him like laurels.

Afaa Michael Weaver.