Purgatory (or, An Absent Apocalypse)

Now: deep in the passionless desert

The sphinx lays supine on an obsidian altar

Red flesh gleaming, vivisected with glass knives.

Wild dogs circle to tighten the gyre

The boldest approaching the predella steps,

The others restrained by their important silence.

These are strange times when men crawl, wrists to knees,

While wolves feign prayers at the apocryphal altar.

Surely this rough beast cannot perish;

Surely the Second Coming hasn’t passed.

The Second Coming! Never has a prophecy

Been so reluctant for its fulfillment.

While I wait, suddenly an overwhelming image 

Haunts me: emerging from the heat

A figure approaches, clothed all in gold;

Sixteen human arms, with a ghoulish white smile,

Its precession unhindered by man’s hand or paw of lion.

Why do we allow such charlatans to walk freely,

Released from the seal of fraternal compassion?

Now I know how William must have felt,

Looking over that blood-dimmed tide, waiting for 

A miscalculated destiny that never arrives.