The Other Dream of Scipio
by Dorothy Nielsen
We toss and turn in 2025.
Say Scipio the Younger is alive
in the celestial sphere that always burns
bright white for heroes; and say he returns
to dream again he’s led up through the dark
by Africanus to the highest arc,
which curves its stellar arms out holding our
distant planet, to watch us from afar.
Would he see in droning wars our stoic men
like those he led, who gave and gave again
to earn souls’ laurels and ethereal rest
by sacrificing blood and bone; their flesh
nailed to this world until they, beaten, died
in hopes they would at last be eulogized;
treasured sons who’d trade their bodies so old men,
women, and children in their beloved land
could dream calm dreams through dark nights without fear?
And would Scipio, as he did then, now hear
those heavenly intervals that pierce the soul -
those airy chords which can reveal the whole
cosmos ringing true in seven tones:
that promise that we aren’t always alone
wandering, aimless, under the great sun’s
stark eye in badlands till our lives are done,
a sign we have our place among the stars?
I wonder if he, looking down at our
rust age earth - where borders are dissolved
indifferently, frayed flags wave listless love,
half-attentive schoolkids drag their feet
over plastic poppies blowing in grave streets,
civilians carry wars around in phones
from which unceasing propaganda drones -
and, he listening, could ever recognize
amid our pandemonium of cries
the same steel-clear hymns of self-sacrifice
he dreamed he heard that dark and blazing night.Dorothy Nielsen’s poems and essays appear in many journals and books including The Literary Review of Canada, Traces Journal, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, Ekstasis, Christianity and Literature, and Denise Levertov: New Perspectives. She is the author of one poetry collection. Her essay “Sacred Effects of Simple Things” is due out soon in The Alchemy of Stories: Essays on Literature and Life.
"11. 'But the ears of men overpowered by the volume of the sound have grown deaf; and you have in you no duller sense than that of hearing; for instance, at the Catadupa as it is called, where the Nile rushes headlong from very high mountains, the tribe which dwells near that spot, owing to the loudness of the noise has lost the sense of hearing. But this sound of the whole universe revolving at the utmost speed is so awful that the ears of men cannot contain it; just as you are unable to look straight: at the sun, and your eyesight and its perceptions are overpowered by his rays.'
Though marveling at these wonders I still kept turning my eyes at intervals towards the earth."