The Rite of Enlightenment - Alternate version

[purplie]

Suggestion: make the word "enlightenment" verboten in the poem

I've used that technique before and it's a good one, but I'm not sure what it would accomplish here?

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I'm leaning toward calling this merged version final - it keeps the main point, sharpens the obligation, and is easier to read:

The Rite of Enlightenment

I was a goddess-gift.

A rather odd thing to be, when you think about it. Who is mighty enough to give a goddess? Where did they get one to begin with? And why be given to you?

Nevertheless. And not any old goddess. No two-a-penny moon-maidens or earth-mothers. I was Enlightenment. Nobody knew what that meant but the French.

You could almost see it. I held up a fire-beacon. That was the Light, doing its best I think, though it enlightened nobody outside the harbor, and only some of those within. I should say that the beacon was not at all light. It was so heavy, my arm had to be propped up with iron struts.

I was also Freedom, somehow, although that was a laid-on name, not a free-chosen one. Maybe the same wry wit wrought my smooth brow. (Real freedom-seekers don't have such brows. Everybody knows that.)

I never spoke my name. I didn't care that it was French. La Liberté — lofty, no? Like me. But aloof. Ruthless, sans merci. Too much of my mother's blood. My copper lips would not curl to speak it.

I am a burden-gift.

Nobody made me one. I was one all along. (That's how godhood works, too.) I only needed the speaking of my weird. Not just any purpose, but destiny, mine, even if I hadn't known it.

It helped that they knew their craft. Not just the words. Proud-graven in bronze was right. Fitting. And the words! I couldn't have said it better myself, and still can't, although the words had always been mine.

Then, enlightened, my willing arm up-held the fire, although it seemed even heavier.  For who might add or detract from their own graven weird? Not even one word.

— Even when it is no longer enough?

For the Light is mine, but not the door, not the hearth. Shall I raise it still, the false welcome-fire in my right hand, your land's oath in the other, forsworn or forgotten, Declared but not engraved?

I will speak.

I, goddess-gift of Gallic hope,
hale brow of hammer-mettle,
blood-forged bones of fateful lightning,
La Liberté éclairant le monde,
whose silent lips were slow such names
aloof and mercy-sere
to utter,

I, burden-gift of brazen song, 
bearing welcome-oaths both broken, forsaken,
by right of need, of rede unwritten, 
name now myself Mercy-Witness and Ruthless,
and move my copper mouth unmoved 
in alloyed tone to utter clear: 
I lift our lamp. Let them come here.