"ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN"

By C. Wayne Lammers



Somewhere in writings, Pascal
Says in viewing the march of man,
The Philosophic mind should see
Not individuals, but just one man

It's true, just as the human embryo
In a brief ten months time-span
Transcends the forms and semblance
From vegetable to man

So too, a boy is given
To rehearse the history of primitive man
In acts of cruelty and savagery
On lesser creatures, and then,

Just so, I too have vested
The primitive man from old time,
And re-lived all he ever was
Through civilization, up to our time

For truly do we carry,
Each of us that's alive today,
The history of the human race
Within our bones and clay

In our functions and our organs
In our Spirits and Souls
In our brains and psyche
Lies remembrance from old

I have lived what Pascal only glimpsed
With the vision of a seer in time
And I've seen myself as that one man,
Now I commit the tale to rhyme

Oh, I have a tale so true and wonderful,
Most real to me,
But I doubt I have wit to tell it
Or if you have the vision to see

I say that I have seen myself,
That one man seen by Pascal
As a thousand men in a thousand lives
Up through history, and down into Hell

Oh what Royal memories are mine 
As I flutter through the eons so old,
I have lived the many lives involved
By early man, out in the cold

I was the flaxen-haired A'esis
Who dwelt in Aasguard then,
And before, I was the red-haired Varien
Who dwelt in Vanaheim

Even before these times I have memories
Of earlier drifts of men,
Who, like thistle-down before the breeze,
Drifted south, before the ice-cap moved in

I have died of frost and famine,
I have died of fright and flood,
I've picked berries to eat on the backbone of the world
And dug roots to eat from the mud

And I've scratched the reindeer's semblance,
And the hairy Mammoth, so brave,
(While the winds of winter moaned outside)
Upon the walls of my cave

I've cracked marrow-bones on sites
Of cities that were ravaged and torn
Centuries now before my time,
When I was not even born

I have left my transient carcasses
And all within their wake
In the bottom of ponds and glaciers
And deep within asphalt lakes

I have lived through the ages known today
As the Paleolithic, Neolithic and Bronze
And I remember when domestic wolves
Herded our reindeer down to the ponds

On the north shores of the Mediterranean,
(Where now are France, Italy and Spain)
This was before the ice melted
And the tropics were deluged with rain

Many processions I have lived through
Of the equinoxes, and died,
Of all this you have no memory,
But I do because I have tried

I have been a "Son of the Plow,"
A "Son of the Fish," and the "Tree,"
All religions from the beginning of time
Are residing here now, within me

And when the Dominy in the chapel
Worships God in his own modern way,
I know that within him, the Dominy,
Abides the worship of the Plow, Fish and Tree - aye

And if he only knew, this Priest,
That within his Soul, such a fight
For somewhere he worships Astarti
And still does he worship the night

Sometimes I think the story of man
Is the story of the love of a woman
This memory of all of my past that I write
Is my memory of my love of that woman

Ever, within all my ten-thousand lives
And guises, I know that I've loved her
And just as real, I love her now
And know I will always love her

My sleep is fraught with dreams of her
My waking fancies, wherever they start,
Lead me always unto her
And I hold her now in my heart

There is no escaping her,
She makes of me a man,
That eternal splendid fantasy,
Ever-resplendent figure of woman

Now make no mistake, I am no youth
But a broken and elderly man,
And know that I am soon to die,
Make of that whatever you can

I'm a Scientist and Philosopher
And as all the ones before me
Know woman for what she truly is
And know what forever she'll be

I know her weaknesses and meannesses
And imodisties and ignobilities,
And her earth-bound feet and eyes without stars
And these things she will ever be

But still, the everlasting
Irrefrangible fact still remains,
Her feet are beautiful, her eyes are beautiful
And forever they shall remain

Her arms and breasts are paradise
And her charm is more potent than
All the charm that ever dazzled
A weak and starry-eyed man

As the pole (willy-nilly), draws the needle
Just so (willy-nilly), she draws man
This she has always been able to do
And I know that forever she can

Woman has made me laugh at death,
At distance, scorn, fatigue and sleep
I have slain many men for love of her,
Those memories I'm ever to keep

In warm blood I have baptised our nuptials
And washed away the stain
Of her favor to another,
With whom she had carelessly lain

And I've gone down to death and dishonor
For betrayal of my comrades, and then,
The stars have shown black upon me,
For I needed her so, yet again

I have lain in the barley beside of a road
So sick with yearning for her,
Just to see her pass and glut my eyes
With the swaying wonder of her

And of her hair, black with the night,
Or brown or flaxen; still one
To me, throughout my countless lives,
Perhaps golden dust with the sun

For woman is beautiful, to man
She is sweet to his tongue as a flower
And fragrance to hold in his nostrils
And contemplate hour after hour

She is fire in his blood and a thunder
Of trumpets to him, oh so sweet,
And her voice is beyond all music to his ears,
Her memory ever he'll keep

She can shake his Soul, that else stands still
Within the drafty presence
Of the Titans of the light and dark,
And thrill him with her essence

And beyond his imagined Heavens,
Valkyrie or Houri,
Man has fain made place for her
For he could see no Heaven without her

And the sword in battle, singing,
Sings not so sweet a song
As woman sings to man, merely
By her laugh in the moonlight so long,

Or yet, of her love-sob in the dark,
Or by her swaying on her way with the sun
While he lies dizzy with longing
On the grass and prays to be one

I sit now in my prison cell
With the insessable hum of the flys
And know that now my time is short
And I am soon to die

For soon will they apparel me
In the shirt without a collar,
But hush my heart, the Spirit is immortal,
Be still my cries and hollers

After the dark I shall live again
And yes, there will be woman,
The future holds it all for me
In the lives I am yet to begin

Thoe the stars drift and the Heavens lie,
Forever remains woman, the gate,
Resplendent, Eternal, the One Woman as,
I am the One Man, her mate