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.