Your Servant

Who Do You Serve? - II

The tradesmen and the sycophants, the clientele
With politic display profess their most profound respect,
"Your servant, Milord," quoth they.

"Your servant," a minion in picadils and pansied slops
Murmurs with a courtly gesture that conveys
A nicety of knowledge
In the ways of precedence and pretense.

A maid, with eyes that lift in arch regard
Beneath a lowered brow, both coy and brazen,
Avows herself "Your servant to command."

What earns, what buys, what is the price of such devoted service
As is found in these who offer with such easy speech?
What is the worth of such, when value is defined by substance,
And when words are based upon
Naught but the air that gives them voice?

Yet Service is the very cornerstone of Mystery
In which is found the substance that endures;
Doth not the golden chain of Lordship and responsibility,
Of grandeur and of power, define exalted status
By dependence on a greater power?
Doth not the regnant Prince derive from Greater Power still
The potency and privilege of that office?
Each in his place, a link upon a chain that stretches to Divinity
And back again.
So each a servant stands before his master,
Whose power and position thus devolves in some degree
Upon the heads of those who own allegiance to that Lordship.

Perhaps a servant may - by rightly served apprenticeship -
Gain entrance to the Mystery of the master, and attain
Thereby a wealth beyond the threat of theft or loss.
Or yet, perhaps for righteous service giv'n may honored be
And lifted thus -- for chain is also ladder
By which men and angels both descend and rise.

Philosophers and mystics may thus muse --
Yet all about are faces full of cunning, fear or avarice,
With smiles and reverences made by skillful computation
Of the gain.
Whose servants these, in truth?