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.

---