Here are two poems, one that is nearly ancient, Horizon (it’s of my first poems), and the other, I Wander this Wasteland, which is not so ancient but one that came from an ancient feeling I had inside one day. That feeling came from a vague reminiscence of the poem Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (if you haven’t read it, you must!). I once heard Ravi Zacharias recite it in one of his talks. Then I came across it in my English class in high school. The imagery is powerful, and in that time it brought me into an ancient wasteland, that was not so much ancient as much it housed the ruins of the history of mankind. Of course, I didn’t do justice to the feeling and imagination I had inside, yet I think it’s a powerful way to think of life and history. What are all those ruins about? Will I become one of them? That’s why in the end, as I also allude to in Horizon, I look away from the earth and up to the heavens. There must be something out there; there must be a God who brings His divine meaning into the perpetual cycle of inception, glory, and ruin.
Horizon
I look toward the horizon
seeing the famous figures and frames,
the glory of their many works,
and the presence of their names;
They fight for power among the peoples
displaying their skill to amaze–
skill to entice, to make change,
to capture the heart within man’s gaze
Yet by their horizontal leaps and bounds
they ever distract, defer, and suppress
the knowledge of God and His attributes
that the mountains and heavens profess
I Wander This Wasteland
I wander this wasteland
Of many forgotten things;
I think of the mighty men
The majestic mighty kings:
Who are they but remembrances,
The ones that are but “were,”
The dust of my wand’ring feet,
The bones that never stir.
I wander in this foreign land
I seek yet for a sign
A star that would turn me where
There’s knowledge that’s divine