Montaigne. A fantasy. (Completed Version).

Montaigne slept above the stars
in thrall to his dreams
wherever they took him
on their swift nocturnal wings.

"I am a man and nothing is alien to me",
He whispered into his straw filled pillow. -
Outside the windows of his tower
the ice eyed owls fiercely hooted,
a Dormouse shivered among the leaves.

The Heavens that crowned his private study
revealed no debt to Copernicus,
"But what do I know? What can I know?"
Montaigne cried to the whirling stars
spinning in galaxies through the chaos
that even the nail punch of his gaze
could not split open, reveal or measure.

The Moorish treasure box of the Church,
locked deep inside his imagination,
reflected the fading lights of certainty
through the embroidery of his thoughts.
The Church had been the voice of reason
lulling his mind when he knelt to pray,
but the Crown of Thorns in the Sainte Chapelle,
was it only a dead king`s bauble?

The canniest answers are seldom so simple,
and the centrifugal forces of gravity
have so far allowed the centre to hold.
Faith often seems the simplest pathway
across the dark that we cannot fathom,
but the owl and the fox patrolling the shadows
beneath the scimitar swipe of the moon
and the stars that lit Montaigne into dreams,
have only their empty stomachs to think of,
and the insatiable needs of their young.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 6th. - 7th. - 10th. 2017.
January 19th. 2018.

Note. On the ceiling of the study below Montaigne`s bedroom was painted the sky emblazoned with stars, and Gothic Architecture, central to both French and English culture, was initially inspired by the pointed arches and large decorated windows of Islamic art. The animals mentioned in this poem are both real and symbolic, part of the everyday struggle to simply survive. I am a profoundly spiritual person, but like Montaigne I must question all things all the time.