Anonymously Famous

The priestly scribe redacting
Collated national myths,
Birthing monotheism,

The literate, gifted bard
Reassembling traditions
Into singular epics,

Whoever actually drew
The symbols of voynichese
Among inscrutable weeds,

Lost painters of the aurochs,
Sloths, asiatic lions,
Mastodons, and thylacines—

All the artists museums
Notname since none of their own
Names as living flesh are known—

The Master of the Housebook,
Siyah Qalem, all the rest—
These achieved fame without names,

While others left famous names
And nothing else and may not
Have ever lived lives at all.