HELL
The thing about hell
Is that you’re stuck
Unlike purgatory where you
Break fiery rocks until
You’ve worked off the venial
Sins or someone still on
earth
Offers up indulgences, the
Get-out-of-jail-free cards,
Jesus, Mary, Joseph recited
A thousand times until
Luther
Nailed them to the church
door
Declaring faith without works is
fine.
In hell, you’ll burn
Unlike limbo where
The unbaptized languish
Behind bars proclaiming
An innocence that doesn’t
matter
According to papal decree.
In hell, the flames
And various Dantesque
agonies
Are less appalling than
Sartre’s
Discovery: how there’s no
exit
And here you are forever
With all the other people.
The thing about hell
Is also the thing about heaven.
GIVING THANKS
Thanks to Jehovah for the
manna
In the desert. Thanks to the weir
tree
For protection, to the fox for
cunning,
To the wolf for loyalty. And
thanks
To Chac for trading rains for
virgins,
To Zeus for propagation,
Aphrodite
For beauty, Mars for valor,
Atalanta
For good hunting, to coyote for
trickery.
Thanks to Poseidon for the oceans, to the
moon
And the sun, the goddesses of
flowers,
To Kali armed with death, to Bee Man
Krishna,
And Buddha who never wished to be a
deity.
To the Mother of Wiccans, to the Lord of the
Pilgrims, to Allah the One and Jesus of
Nazareth. To the saints and
madonnas,
The spirits of the waters, to all who
may
Listen and to those who turn their
heads.
And thanks most of all
To the scale of the
tragicomic
God of fifty-fifty.
Sweet Lord of Luck.
IN THE LORD’S STABLES
A small chap with pale eyes.
His wife, a blowsy woman
twice
his size. He prides himself
When I worked for Lord
Derby
pronounced in the proper
English
fashion, and tells stories of
the
great Hyperion for whom his
one-horse
stable has been named.
A subject of mild derision:
Remember when those two ran
a
head-shop up north peddling bongs.
The shabby house they rent,
filthy,
(though he is always neat) his
wife’s
enormous Ridgebacks
bred to kill
lions. At the dispersal
of a large estate where he once
worked,
I buy a black mare and he’s
upset
You ought to bought Cassandra as well,
them
two as is mates,
his posh accent
slipping into Cockney.
The pair of them: a devious
reputation.
The slow trust-fund girl they
claim
to be their ward. The stud they
stand
His granddam sister to the
granddam
of Northern Dancer
though he has small
use
for upstarts. His heart belongs
to
Blenheim and Sir Galahad, the
blooded
legends. As he rakes his
shedrow
in careful patterns, I can
see
the child groom he used to
be
laboring in the great lord’s
stables.
No comments:
Post a Comment