APPROACHING THE THRONE

Let’s ask the soldier for a song. His cupped match lights up a youthful face. He’ll be dead soon. He turns toward us the broad back of his greatcoat. He won’t sing Lili Marlene. Why did you kill the highway, the moods of the traveller? This is your mind when you have abandoned me. My priest has not been born. My people have not been born. My wife is sleeping. I have not built the angels around her. O my enemy, how long will you go on judging me from your little pile of shit? End my disgrace in your temple. Look what I have to smite you: Bibles and jawbone and razor straps, but most of all an intimacy with your heart as you sit there wondering whether it is right or wrong, this cry from my throat that has broken down the defenceless world forever.