I shall recount a snowy day;
A dreary, snowy day,
When I visited an aged college;
An aged, old college.
There did I find a museum
Built like a great mausoleum,
Like a sacred, still, ancient tomb
With artifacts sealed in each room
Away from homes in foreign lands,
Stol’n by bloodied, conquering hands.
There I spied her, standing o’er me
Like an aged, uprooted tree.
Like a felled tree, she too is cut
Across her feet, across her gut,
Across her hips, beneath her head.
Were she alive, she would be red
With slip’ry blood-stained marble skin,
Clad in linen, gory and thin,
Enshrouding her decaying form
Proudly displayed with rot and worm.
Ripped from her home nations away,
The goddess dies and finds decay,
Cut up and split apart for ease
Of transport ‘cross accursed seas.
I pitied this great giantess
With spear and shield close to her chest
Defensively held in her grasp
‘Til her last breath, a divine rasp.
The shutting of museum doors
And shuf’ling boots against its floors
Drown the warm hymns she might have heard,
Hearing neither whisper nor word.
Yet her corpse stands atop a base,
Shackled as tears stream from her face.
How dusty was her tusken helm,
How far it is from her godrealm.
After a thought, I left that hall
And returned to the white snowfall.
I left those halls, as I could leave.
How I wish the goddess could leave!
But there do we stand dumb and gawk,
Before a great goddess and gawk.
Hunter Thomas is a poet and a graduate of East Stroudsburg University. At ESU, they were editor-in-chief of Calliope Literary Magazine and the winner of the Leah Gumpper '01 Memorial Poetry Annual Scholarship. They later became a poetry staff writer at Dalika Magazine. In their spare time, they enjoy craft beer and rock 'n' roll.
