Why, Lord, do you walk away
refusing to take sides?
Evil has smashed innocence
into innocence and shattered
the glass towers where our safety soundly slept.
Wickedness now is a wasp-nest politics
knocked suddenly out of the tree;
everywhere a furious confusion
stings in the name of divinity defended.
The great, fanged gears of clockwork war
want turning,
want arms ticking knives
across faithless faces
as they pull in every mobilizing lie
within easy reach.
Who can point to the very mountain
over which this sun insatiable
first slowly rose?
Who can see the ash-heap hill
behind which it will finally set?
Two enemies with guns and pens,
hatefully united by a single genre,
write psalms in blood of ancient loathing;
their compositions contest
exclusive fidelity to the gory text.
You read them, Lord, and weep.
It seems you simply were not made
for this dark red black and white game.