PAN

For all that is still feral and unstoppable in each of us.

by V.B. Price

Startling as cats laughing, as mastiffs
whistling a happy tune, Pan is Great

the fast god of fear,
of “get the hell outta here” grizzly fear,

of adrenaline blasts,
squirrels darting from eagles,

kids squealing in panicked joy
at a wiggly odd ugly old bug. Brainy,

feral, Pan is
as we are: both

earth born
and more,

as the world without us is
still holy.

On his haunches, tail switching,
horns laid back, adored,

He casts his dice with Aphrodite, teaching Her
the chances, taught by Her that skin

is god-awful holy too.
And Pan, with his fabulous

indifferent
strangeness,

the force of all
that is not supposed to be,

Aphrodite knows
that Pan is great

because he is like her:
sublime beyond validity,

prooflessly real.
And when the temples were closed down, sealed false

by piety in AD 391, when even the sun
was stripped of its holy place, multiplicity

deposed, the curtains on Olympus closed,
the sets dismantled, the scripts and part books

folded in a trunk,
Great Pan is dead, they said.

But He isn’t,
never will be. He kept the dice,

fended off the suffering god
who absorbed from the earth

its ceaseless resurrection.
Pan remains

like us,
eternally born,

and earns
our jumpy, hot respect

each day we choose
the mischievous truth

of ourselves,
refusing to be tamed.

Monster dear, darling beast
we think we’re not,

God of our indispensable mental defeats,
when panic saves us

from thinking ourselves
onto the platter of death.

You are the Great nymph dancer,
blessed with deep noontime snoozes

that perfume out to us
even now

to drug us with surprised affection.
You are here in our longing,

in our wisest fears
of immobility

and crushing rule,
always here, blossoming up through freeways,

sidewalks, concrete curbs, the weed
no order can keep out.

Dear Pan,
master of grace

in the Holy Mess we thrive in,
teach us how

to learn to be loved
again and again,

like beasts who finally
trust enough, and keep on trusting,

so truth and play
may dance

the serious depths together,
safe, calm, wild, fast, and unafraid.

(Image derived from photo from Lalupa.)

NOTICE

The Mercury Messenger staff will go on summer break, the first in two and a half years, to recharge and plant our gardens, starting May 27 and ending August 5.