For millennia on end, I stood
On a mountain, showering light.
Many marauders came to bring
Me low with ignorant might.
But, after every assault,
I bounced back in wise recourse
To correct their violent fault.
Alas, I now know that the worst
Envy of my spiritual state
Lay coiled among my kin at home
Whose pretence of love for me
Was a strategy of the deepest hate,
Lying in poisoned wait
To dismember my ethereal dome.
What saint may withstand the
Villainy of a brother who, it turns out,
Has always been a scheming “other.”
Look where I will, my waters weep,
My gardens mourn, my roseate
Children turn deathly pale.
No storms they have weathered
Have ever been as corrosive
In intent as this home-spun gale.
Those that may come again
For my tulip and cataract
Will witness only a dead spread
In the wake of a murderous act.
For once I cannot tell what
Messiah may come, and when,
To alter this new gruesome fact.
My lips are cold, my song
Disfigured in a raucous roar
Of spiteful glee. A faith dies
In me that never died before.
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