Requiem For a Nightmare
Imagine Earth itself to be just another Troy, from which, after having raged
In countless battles from Tyre to Megiddo has not been conquered, only aged
And now, having defeated the Spartan race, destroying Priam’s home
Odysseus is captain of a spacecraft with the direction of Ithaca not known
On land to land, world to world, asteroid to comet, sun to galaxy he will wander lost
With endless delay, look askance-or with wanderlust-be unable to define a host
Of angels, like the first home, who—with celestial sound—closed God on a throne
Only future starmen will proceed without God's advantage, in empty space all alone
The victory of God against Satan, here, unproclaimed with all men lost, in between
The endless battles of lucifer and the deity; heaven's splinter to the devil's spleen
The past ages of travail, a mere testing ground of efficacy, the master's saving grace
With the bulk of humanity, like chaff of wheat, having been sifted, as if only a race
Mankind, having run as a race, a race, quite long, the original cause forgotten
How corruption had entered, how the fall began, when Eve traipsed the garden
Yet the race of man; his nature, his spoke, his mind, like a wheel intermingled
Along with the path of the gods--their flight, their call--the Seth of Eve first jingled
How could he not but cry out, from crib, in inter-mixed and complex strain
Since so saith Adam's wife, doting upon her first real child aptly named
Appointed to replace her prior kind, one stricken and one banished
Shepherd Abel first, died, from blight of Cain, latter, whose soul famished
If not his body, since fed with fruit and till of the land, in parched curse
His work distilled into nonsense, and measure as much less in worth
Then the gentle, strange and loving work of the Shepherd's hand
From Shepherd to shepherd, the Maker gave not to Abel land
Since he roamed from brook to brook, or down into gentle meadow
With his staff in hand, and flock afoot, only the caves like ghettos
Learning manly ways and singing with chest open and bare
Under open sky, canopy misting light, and all of life seeming fair
The Lord, himself, culling Abel's rapport and favour, giving him trust
Rather than partition acres, cubits or parcels of land, if only just just
Copyright © Leroy Baker | Year Posted 2020
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