Don Gray
Art Essays, Art Criticism & Poems
The Grave Robber...A PoemTwo thousand years ago, he robbed a tomb; digging by night through layered earth, removed the fitted stones, filled his sack with gold, rubies, lapis lazuli. Living for the ever faithless moment, he stole for food, for wine, for shifty women, shiftless self. It was his nature, his need, his way...the world's way. He was just making a living like the royal, recumbent king or queen who, by their ancient death, allowed an income of his own. He did not cringe at taking rings from parchment fingers, necklaces and amulets on gilded rib cage, vertebrae. No thought occurred that what he stole from would, one day, be himself, in a time too soon, become old bones; his burial site, a rudely scraped hole, shallow, forgotten but by teeming creatures of the soil seeking, in turn, their satisfaction. But the rich receive, provide special options; so are we made. Each man looks out for himself, somewhere finds raiment thick with threaded gold. Why can't a poor man today profit from yesterday's wealth, lives lived in luxury? Let them pay back, in death, the man of poverty so far below their class, dismissed by them in life, that finds their final resting place. Who cares? Do they? Anthropologists say they search for art, objects of timeless beauty, historical reminders of eras passed that tell of lives, styles of living, from which we may learn of ourselves, attempt to solve our own conundrum. Preserve them in museums, repositories, shining relics, studied, viewed by scholars, the public, which wouldn't mind having, covet, crowns and coronets, scepters, golden staffs, so resplendent with precious jewels, converted to cash in bank accounts, should opportunity confirm devious minds...like our robber of old. He took fine vessels filled with goods for the journey to life beyond; poured out faint unguents and sweetmeats, shriveled tidbits still unused from that great distance, but by slow, swift time. Shook them out, spread them about, to pocket a piece of jewelry that might be there. If pots proved stubborn in removal, he shattered them with a dexterous blow, scattered shards mixing with objects of desire. He plucked plunder from carnage, careful not to cut his fingers on the broken past. No disturbance of sacred dead was too extreme to be quite sure all gold and gems had been retrieved. Exquisite paintings and mosaics, the glory of the chamber walls, were ignored, of course. Culture, story, legend, myth are not the salient point. Who cares about color, beauty, meaning...design that tells the measure of our souls, unless it be the chroma of riches, sensual, seductive. But the corpse, devoutly laid in age'd linen, could not be ignored. It was brusquely thrust aside by rummaging search, antique attic must and mold upheaved by eager, antic quest, tossed wide in piles, humdrum bits and pieces, tumble of dry decay amidst which the gleam of value might be perceived. The flickering lantern of the thorough searcher angled rays of light, deep zones of shifting shadow. Figures of paint and tessera glinted and glowed, seemed to breathe, to smile, move, as if brought back to life after thousands of years by this abrupt invasion. No one had seen them, in the loneliness of death, known they were there, knew of their existence. They had not seen themselves and each other for millennia until the lamp was lit, no matter the motive for illumination. They were gladly alive once more, grateful for the radiance of the world. Once again, they appeared intent upon their lives, their duties in full service to their lord, in life and in eternity, now an adaptation to death's disarray by theft, sad, crude intrusion of greedy, future worlds undreamed, unimagined by shocked beholders of belief, past principle, inhabitants of minds long emptied of their thought. An assault on the order of power, now gone; courtly affairs, domesticity, dignity of the death-fearing, heaven-hoping human heart. Depending on circumstance, and whether he thinks the crypt may be worthy of another sortie -- there may be more bounty, more booty to be found -- the grave thief covers his tracks, carefully closes, disguises the grey tomb's canted entrance, removes traces of his presence, at least to outer eyes; or leaves outside the chaos inside in darkness, his violation for all men and gods to see. What, in turning worlds, was the stealer's destiny, eons disappeared, with hardly a monument like that he robbed? No proof he even existed, in the balancing of accounts, beyond his own lost bones, scavenger gnawed by fox, mouse, bacterium, much like his life, in greedy need ordained by God, by the rules of existence defining our world. Did he have an after-life, any more or less than king and queen; did God treat him well? Or, does he twist and simmer in cosmic payment overblown? Does post-mortem punishment fit his little crime? Life, its way, the way God made it, can't help but be morally shabby. Consider grim nature's law... hardship, mental anguish, fatigue of body, dirt; cruelty, disease, duress; necessity, pain, death; equivalents of man's lust for money, evil, expedient deceit, scoundrel hypocrisy. Religion, man's wholesome, feeble, corrupt attempt, to seek, reach out for, counter, God's reality, desirous, rejected, ambivalent, still-born in futility, contradiction, helplessness. So, king, queen, robber of graves make their best of lives, moral, immoral by the standards of our mind. But, when survival is at issue, acts are done. Who, then, will judge, having themselves not fallen beneath the mark established by conscience and ancient dreams of society for a world of better men? If not murder or destruction of holiness, all things revered, then what is the weight of smaller sins? Ruled by hubris, enshrined in feral transience, we cavil and splutter through life, believe we are gods, omniscient, with blinkered wisdom from the playpen of our petty thrones. Despite all, yet are we called, have the right, the obligation, to see, to think, to judge. Whatever our flaws, God has given us the means to assess for ourselves, free from restraint by any institution, individual, interest, the warp and woof of man and the world. God has bequeathed feelings and a brain, expecting they be honestly used, diligently, within our arena of admitted limitations; have discipline, passion, clarity; substance, depth of searching exploration, insight, focused thought. Understand...we are the king, queen, robber of graves. Copyright by Don Gray
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