After a Statue of Pan

By Bruce Boston

He danced in fabled joy
as the moons passed
and the stars aged
and the lands changed
beneath his cloven hooves
from turf to cobbled stone,

from porous concrete slabs
to plates of seamless steel.
He danced in frenzied joy
until the slow waning
of his earthly days
fixed him in marble,

fixed him in legend
cold as the ages,
froze him in one last
fey ecstatic moment
for the porous future
to mortalize and neglect.