We saw God in the heavens,
Lord of the Stars and Angels.
We saw them sing the world
That Cosmos, the grand order of things,
We saw them dance the order of time.
Long lived creatures still danced in woods,
And emperors conquered by heavenly signs.
In bread and wine divinity sat, vouchsafed,
For Peter’s church stood strong.
A maiden sent from God crowned a king,
And bicolored roses mingled in chemical glory.
But then the Serpent arose, and asked:
“Did God really say that this was the world?”
We ate and saw our nakedness.
Stands made and Church rebroken.
Then the Wedding failed,
And the World was torn by war,
The last light of the old way fading.
Stove-summoned pandemonium darkened.
What claim had kings
Even to their heads?
What bigot dares claim the truth?
The jest of Pilate reverberating.
How could God seek out one lost lamb,
Leaving the ninety-nine to become lost themselves?
Better a God of Reason, we thought,
Who clock-makes and ignores.
But who could forgive God his indifference?
So overthrown were the sign-conquering lords,
For how dare they claim to act for God.
Beheaded by act of committees of
Monstrous men, torturing for pleasure,
Demon devouring demon in omni-suicidal orgy.
New emperors arose, Spirits of History,
Seen by young thinkers in flight.
And again the Serpent spoke,
“Now that your senses are lost,
Know now that your community hides
The world from you.”
New idols arose, powers of production.
What once was true no longer was.
What is true one day will not be.
The oppressed would unite, someday.
Demons ran throughout the West,
Before being cast into herds to drown.
No longer indifferent,
God was dead,
And none could forgive his nonexistence.
Dark lords by dark speeches
Did send the people of the Lord to the fire,
The ones God loved and would gather under his wing.
The sign-lords of the east met destruction,
From pigs who became men.
And the Serpent spoke again,
“Words hide the world from you.
Have you not seen that suspicion itself
Is the Power to know?”
Second Babel had come,
A tower set, like Oroboros,
To eat its own foundations.
What was grammar but oppression?
Who dares to assert the truth of the Word
Against the almighty powers of death and time?
The Serpent, coiled around us, spoke,
“You hide yourself by restraint,
Let passion run free,
And see yourselves.”
And we loved freely,
And we massacred its fruit,
An altar before Mammon,
Surpassing Moloch, child by child.
Now all the demons dance together.
What word is free from the evil of falsehood?
What law claims any but mocking dignity?
What pleasure claims selflessness?
The demons devour each other in their hunger.
Behold an image of this age:
A person stabs at herself,
Unable to bear the weight of dark words,
Curses upon her by the lords of lawlessness,
For she was not as lawless as they;
Blood from self-inflicted wound.
When we call people deceptive demons,
All charity forgotten in the glory of suspicion,
We tear at one another like ravening wolves,
And our children destroy themselves,
Those that yet live.
Truly it was said long ago,
That Child-like-faith was true faith.
Now we are blind,
For we saw through sight itself.
Where is the Felix Culpa?
What good will God bring from this darkness?
Shall we learn to receive again, as we used?
Perhaps delighting a little more than we would have
In the hiddenness of the world
And in the silence and darkness of God?
