A thirty-mile thick crystalline wall
Shrouding all sight like a bride’s lacy shawl
We chisel and chip at its translucent sides
Revealing, bit-by-bit, it slowly confides
The secret of perpetual motion
That unattainable perfection.
We scratch and we scrape, scathing with Lilliputian tines
Tantalos: reaching and reaching for the succulent fruit from its e’er-receding vines.
But how do we know when to stop cutting away at the wall.
It seems to protect and shelter from the looming lawless squall.
What if it shatters, shards impaling every one of us as it falls?
Or are we just prisoners, unable to grasp the bliss beyond the wall?

I am left to wonder how those before could not see what now seems so clear,
What the crystalline wall once encased and concealed.
I dissociate from my ancestors who left the wall alone:
Failing to distinguish tradition from a gilded stone.
Will I have the comprehension to recognize when it’s time
To take up a pickaxe, though deemed as a crime?
For those before who’ve been removing each layer of the divide,
I know I should join in, though doubt whispers and chides
To lay down my tool and the vigor I’ve dawned
“What if the wall falls? Who knows what’s beyond?”
This wall will not crumble by it’s own volition
Just law is being obscured by this wall of tradition.

Will my grandchildren look back with pride at shards that I helped remove through insightful extraction?

Or will I be shunned for my lack of moral comprehension, or worse, my inaction?