Be not solicitous for the shadow of a great name, nor for acquaintance with many… (Imitation of Christ III,24)
I used to listen for my name
in rooms where it echoed best -
where chairs were arranged
to face whoever spoke the loudest,
where light learned to favor the lectern.
I mistook that brightness for warmth.
Once, walking home after such a night,
I passed a man kneeling beside a stalled car,
hands black with grease,
shirt damp with cold.
No one watched him.
No one needed his opinion.
He worked slowly,
as if time were not a thing to win,
as if the task itself
were enough reason to stay.
I stood there a moment,
holding my coat closed,
feeling the weight of words
I had spent all evening sharpening.
The man looked up...not asking,
not explaining -
just the glance of someone
who had already consented
to being where he was.
Later, at home,
I emptied my pockets:
keys, coins, the folded receipt
from a place that spelled my name correctly.
Nothing there
that would turn a wheel.
Now, when I wake,
I try to begin with my hands.
What they can lift.
What they can mend.
What they must set down
to remain steady.
I have learned this much:
the world opens more easily
to those who arrive unadorned,
who do not ask to be recognized
before they are useful.
Fame is a shadow -
it lengthens at sunset
and disappears at noon.
But work done quietly
stays solid in the light.
GBS jr
2001
Author's Note
This poem engages The Imitation of Christ (III.24) by embodying humility as practice rather than principle. Instead of quoting or paraphrasing Thomas à Kempis directly, the poem dramatizes the renunciation of “a great name” through concrete experience: rooms arranged for attention, the seduction of public recognition, and the contrast with anonymous, necessary labor.
The turning point is not moral instruction but witness, the speaker observing uncelebrated work that requires no audience. The poem avoids preaching by allowing humility to emerge as a felt realization, discovered through contrast and consequence rather than asserted belief. The final image (“Fame is a shadow…”) echoes the spiritual teaching metaphorically, translating theological insight into physical phenomena, thereby keeping the poem grounded in lived, secular imagery while remaining faithful to the inward discipline emphasized in The Imitation of Christ.
George
A Follow-up Poem almost 25 Years Later:
What Time Teaches at the Threshold
I used to arrive early, voice prepared, name polished, credentials folded neatly like a pressed shirt.
I believed the door listened for confidence.
Now my hands shake a little when I knock. Not from fear - from knowing how little arrives intact.
Years have taken the shine first. Then the hunger. Then the need to be remarkable.
What’s left comes lighter. A body that remembers weather. A mind that knows the cost of noise. A heart that has lost enough to stop bargaining.
I no longer rehearse. The knock is what it is. Sometimes only a pause, sometimes the sound of bone on wood.
If a voice answers now, it is not asking for lineage, or proof, or usefulness.
It asks what I have carried this far without dropping.
I answer with what remains: a few names spoken carefully, a patience learned the hard way, the habit of listening before entering.
This is how age imitates wisdom - not by adding weight, but by setting things down.
The door opens not because I am worthy, but because I am finished pretending to be more than what time has allowed me to keep.
GBS jr
2024
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