Image credit: Nandini Kochar
Sitting down in churches puts me in a strange mood. I see them as small packets of culture, reflecting time periods and beliefs on a grand yet manageable scale. You’ll never see absolutely everything that a city offers, no matter how small or quaint it is. In comparison, a church, no matter how gaudy and majestic, is walkable. You can travel around a church multiple times and drink in every little detail of it. It’s in three little religious time capsules in Vienna (St. Peter’s, St. Stephen’s and St. Michael’s for all the travelers and Googlers out there), found sandwiched in between some very modern architecture, that I got to thinking about how these little areas of history have remained standing even in the midst of all the change - through wars and age and numerous obstacles, they remain standing proud, probably far longer than anyone really expected they would. While sitting down in these churches, I wrote out some lines and later organized them into a poem about perseverance through time. So, in keeping with this theme, and lacking the creativity to come up with something better, I call this poem...
Persevere
With the time he had left he
Grasped at the starlight he fought so hard to master and
Keeping family traditions in mind
Leapt at the chance to dig his own grave
With the time he had left he
Wrestled with heretics that declared him an artifact and
Finishing what he started
Ground the coffee beans into dust beneath his Dr. Martens
With the time he had left he
Gazed at the fading grandeur of walls held together by egg shells and
Brandishing his dulled sword
Traced the ancient map of his downfall
Spitting on the Oracle that declared his doom
Inaccurately
Turning the other cheek and holding
His cross-legged stance for long enough to display
A line streaked face to the paying
Audience
Their laughter echoes.
