The Humanities Scholar

 Some people fascinate me

the common Man fascinates me 

because he has a World inside him 

but then there are those who are most empty 

who dwell in dusty libraries 

hardly seeing the light of Day 

and they try to fill the emptiness inside them 

they try to fill it by learning the word for "love"

in a dead language

they try to fill it by memorizing a warrior's heroic feats

they try to fill it by looking at the designs on an urn and saying

they recognize the motif

you haven't interacted with a soul in a long time, have you?

you were too busy crafting the perfect form for an argument in Philosophy,

training the careful eye for Art History,

mastering the dizzying amount of knowledge of Greek and Latin required for Classics,

or perhaps you merely speak English, but no one understands you

because you are in Critical Theory 

Most humans I meet fascinate me

because there is a Universe inside them

but you are so hollow

that you went to university 

to find a universe worth studying

and you've been there ever since

you who are a Scholar of the Humanities

you must eventually reckon with the futility 

of your pursuit

for there is no future in history 

you who love the Ancients

what have the Ancients done for you? 

what has loving mythology and language done for you?

what has loving literature done for you, 

but given you a heart that feels twice as much,

and made you feel like you've lived a thousand lives

through different eyes

but still don't know who you are

you can tell people about the similarities among the world's mythologies,

you can tell them how a civilization rose and fell,

you can tell them about the lovely metaphors in a lyric,

but do not expect them to listen,

do not expect them to care

or to think of you as anything but weird

See how happy people are

out on the soft grass?

being humans instead of worrying

about studying humans

but to me the world outside is cruel,

outside there are wars

dirty ones, not the ones of epic poems,

outside there exists Politics

and numerous social issues like a plague

but here in a fragment from an old poem, 

here in the art in the border of an ancient map, 

there is beauty

there is culture

yes, here in these books is my refuge

I see the classicist now

I see the historian and 

the philologist

they have their hands on a book so rare

there are only three copies of it left

the very madness that compels these scholars in the museum compels me

I can not stop myself when I see those sculptures in the gallery 

My heart feels a strange yearning to listen to an old scholar discuss a life's worth of research on various conceptions of the afterlife across cultures

And here I am

writing a poem 

a poem 

so that's how I know

I've not been spared this curse

and I have that same hungry emptiness 

which I seek to fulfill with verse