Apocryphal Idols
by Cheryl Vail, with image above by Martin Gollan
Liberty’s a goddess
yet how can she embody her name
when she isn’t permitted to be as she is
when her own choices are sand through a sieve held
in someone else’s hands
she isn’t an automaton that prefix doesn’t work
she’s more marionette bound by politicians’ strings
or paper doll her dimensions compressed
libertas the origins of means ‘belonging to the people’
and this in turn means ‘free’
but what is freedom at the cost of her body
but what is freedom at the exhaustion of her will
how can she be free when she belongs to ‘the people’
when she doesn’t belong to herself?
