The Grace of Men

You carry the baby-weighted world

On your back with marble frowns,

Father to it all.

Shouldering the awful, stallion sun

You make your days a labour

Too large for thanking,

A generosity longer-lived than

The heart of rocks that perfect

Their time for breaking.

But behind grave gestures, still you breathe.

Beneath the dark and steeling

Armour which you drag

With you, a lesser-born and dusty

Hercules, your nature

Is more brilliant.

You uncoil from this brittle skin, a

Brief man, pared down to a core

That's tender as fruit.

Bleeding, secretly, underneath the

Breastplate - a dark and blooming stain

Pushing hungrily

Out for audience. A rarer flower,

Stranger to its soil. Clean rooted,

Drawing love deeply

In, cherishing it closely, an

Ember of the First Fire,

Pregnant with the blaze

Of centuries. It is the child you bear.

A pivot upon which your

Hidden graces turn.

When you bleed, and break, and laugh - wide laughs

That turn the world back upon

Her heel with surprise -

Then you speak. It is these mortal bones

That make you; gritted, glass-cracked

Love that is your strength.