Lamps

Picture a lamp:
beautiful in its function,
functional in its beauty,
every part together, working for its purpose...
This might have been a lamp.
It looked more like one than, say, a stone,
but as for its working -
there was something wrong in the mold,
a leak, a corroded connection, a darkened glass,
a fatal flaw, which doomed its purpose to futility.
A total write-off,
more than useless, a health hazard,
certain death for any owner
yet all had them, all that they owned.
Why then, would the King's son
(disguised, perhaps, as a lamp-maker)
in this land of night
give a cry unheard before or since:
"New lamps for old!" ?
Who would, in fear and doubt,
give up all they had
for something skeptics said was lost in time?
"All lamp-makers are the same."
The Prince died of his deadly generosity -
But his lamps were perfect.

-- Kathryn A