06 Mar I Will Never Forget The Sound Pts. I, II, & III
Posted at 03:40h
in Poems
I
When I was a boy, six years old,
On Good Friday in 2002,
An empty church returned an echo
From my fidgets in the pew.
The church was so dim that evening
Rain outside hid the stained glass scenes;
I asked Jesus why He died for me
If I had yet to sin by any means.
Jesus sighed from above the altar,
He never turned to look at me
As He predicted in chilling whisper:
“Indeed, you will; you will see.”
II
Clutching where the horizon stands
Seven mountains of dazzling stones
Where the gallery of the luminaries
Tend solemnity from their thrones
Beyond these sharp pillars of earth
No foundations were forged to lie
Without winds, without waters
Where God had not unfurled the sky
There stands the bondage of stars,
Burning till the Day of Mystery dawns,
Where the noise of the night and the midnight teeth
Rise up in dishonor in a rebellion from beneath
But until this Day of Arraignment
Under the chasm of their containment
Conspire blinded angels made of machine-parts
To hatch a horror in Heaven and pilfer swollen hearts
That suffer evil and seek in dreams
And seek in induced visions
The answers but, it always seems —
To end the same for the pneumatics
Occult idols in their attics
Minds clouded to right and wrong
Those terror-spirits whisper mother tongues
And scheme to spill human blood all alone
Lest an adversary try to take me
Avast, in seas of antimony
Burnish mattocks from lances and decline the advances
That cause the bidden cruel impiety
III
When I was a man of twenty-three,
A blustered day not so long ago
Added to firm waters dryer sobs
When I heard a rapids-gale blow.
Impressed on my soul that day
Was the threat of love, a grace;
Love is not what they said it was,
Abominations took its holy place.
A haunt of lust surrounds me,
A drapery around my eyes,
But by the Power that lives forever
I have risen over, I shall rise;
And every scale that falls away
Disappears to where darkness lies,
I shall never forget the sound of rapids-gale,
Nor the sound of Jesus when He sighs.