Crescendo Against Heaven

Crescendo Against Heaven by Michael R. Burch As curiously formal as the rose, the imperious Word grows until its sheds red-gilded leaves: then heaven grieves love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination against God, its contention of the price of salvation. These industrious trees, endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves, finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing themselves to bits, washing themselves free of all but the final ignominy of death, become at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb. Together now, rude coffins, crosses, death-cursed but bright vermillion roses, bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire together with a nearby spire to raise their Accusation Dire ... to scream, complain, to point out these and other Dark Anomalies. God always silent, ever afar, distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star, we point out now, in resignation: You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation, gave too much strength to his Enemy, as though to prove Your Self greater than He, at our expense, and so men die (whose accusations vex the sky) yet hope, somehow, that You are good ... just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.