Civil War Crucifixion.

Where brother stood against brother
And the nation forgot the mothers
Of their heroed sons now underground,

Where the sordid muck of civil war
Empties its glutinous sores
To pour out puss and blood,
And as a sea of claws
The mud will clench
like iron fists
beneath their legs,
cramped cruelly
by aching spellbound feet
dancing the ancient stench of death.

Where one man, seeing dawn rise
on a deep red sky, and knowing
by now the natural signs
for the new day’s battling raids,
raised his hand
and spoke aloud,

and by some craft
his words sprang round
to resound in every throat,
where it tortured the dark
of their weeping hearts:

‘Could it possible!’
the one exclaimed,
as a heralding messenger
with a voice of flames,
that strained,
wavering against the winds
that faithfully herded
the rains again:

‘Could it be possible
that the old crusted saints
have not yet heard!’

and the field stood straight
to attention as a shifted acre,
so poignantly absurd
as the clouds crossed
over head and they heard:


‘Could it be possible,
that the old crusted saints
have not yet learned,
huddled in the tangled forests
of their war-making,
that God is dead
and now but a word!’

and the stillness spread
like a blind white light,
cold and unforgiving across
the silenced ranks of muskets
and their brave (k)nights;

But the one was weary, and quietly,
beyond the hearing of his flock,
promises himself sleep that day,
and so at the last he did say:

‘Our god is dead,
he died long ago,
while we were ever
too proud to know,
Dead
when man first raised victorious swords,
red with the blood of his fallen lords,
Dead
when equal man crushed equal man
into dusty memories beneath the sands,
since the dreams
to defy all forces
and become the very hands of time,
immortal Seer but ever a scythe:

And so this is how it began, my friends,
and this is where it ends my men,’
he boldly commanded them,

‘When you, who should have
stayed locked in the pig-pens
of thoughtless beasts
were let to run free,
while not yet cured
from the diseases
of your worm wriggling minds.’


And it was then, just when
the quiet had grown to a riot
of silence,

He raised His rifle,
half man half god,

and pushed the sight
into His eye divine,

and fired the first shot of a war,
where god was dead
and nothing {nowhere}
could be wrong anymore

.
***