The Killing of the God

[Aboard a barque tossed to and fro upon the salted sea. Grim figures sing, unmerrily, their faces moistened by the churning waves. Their words disappear into the wind.]

Chorus:

Sailing across the silver sea,

Smoke in distance beckons we,

And in our ship our cargo bare

A sacrifice of toil and care.

A god upraised to cloud the sky;

A god unborn who now must die--

A petty cloud pass o'er the sun

We'll light the flames, ere day is done.

***

Verse 2:

Our company upraise the night,

The boat sets down on reef upright,

And all ahead the shore shines white,

While under moonlit shadow flight

Of mendicants meek, moving on--

To burn to ash till light is gone.

***

Verse 3:

In blood upraised is man from birth

A shadow of a devil's mirth;

To light the kindling of his soul--

So strait the gate,

The cryptic scroll

Which lieth in the mouth of time

(Does proclaim blood)

A thing sublime.

***

[The ancient faces peer about in shadowed horror, wooden spike to be upraised against the shoreline surge, as pale doves cry and sea salt foam and gnash its beak 'gainst teeth of stone.]

***

[One man, a priest perhaps, steps forward and declares:]

"Our Unknown God raised like a lion,

Meek as a lamb--

Enact again

The ritual suffering,

Scourging again, the nailing-in

With thorn and thistle and Roman wind;

With pig-iron splendor and broken dust

fragments laid in your tomb,

Amidst splendor of fish and hair."

***

[And the company begin to shout.]

"Charge him! Slander him! Vilify and turn thy back!"

***

The company drag his image

through the streets of their minds at dawn

But this is no stuffed monkey of straw and feather,

No pillow with a man's image;

But a corpse upright

Nailed in to herald the passing from fire into winter frost.

***

"More blood! More thorns! More stones!"

"And spittle, bitter gall and vinegar!"

***

And the company, dirty and dusty and weary for ten thousand years,

Light the pyre of His Love

As churning sea and salted foam billow against savage

earthen fangs,

Under the dying moon.