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. That which I was, and am, and, in the end, shall always have been.

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? Or turn one word?

What then if the words be broken? 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 forsaken,
I, 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.