Skip to main content

An Epilogue, Of Sorts

 

To be like God, the Devil knows, must burn,

                As golden juice runs thick inside their veins

                And knowledge seeps around their brains like chains,

To know, to care, and yet still love the spurn

Of mud-piles you just made, who made in turn

                Your breath a game, your love their lost campaigns.

                “I should rejoice for causing You such pains,”

The Devil thinks, “for I have made them Learn.

I did the one thing that You never would:

It is finished, Your world is made anew.

I take, and look, and see that it is good.

And I alone, have saved them all from You.”

Instead, the Devil feels as numb as wood

And wonders why his curses won’t come through.

 

He watches eyes that hide forbidden sight

And thinks this is what Elohim had felt

The seventh day, when all the parts were dealt,

When everything was sung in motion right;

The emptiness that wraps around you, tight

                As snakes, its grin so cold you never melt.

                Eternity awaits, but you are left misspelt.

Your mission is complete – what use is might?

The Devil’s smile is weak and humourless:

                An irony that only Elohim

Can pull – that he, the Liar, should confess

                To being tricked this way. The joke’s on him:

His scheme to spite the Heavens, a success,

                Became the Cornerstone to Yahweh’s whim.

 

-Estelle Wallis, February 2022

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ocean Light

It was fitting, she supposed. A lighthouse. A beacon of hope. A guide to lost travellers. A link between known land and unknown waters. The final rampart between the darkness of the earth and of the sea. How poetic. Of course, as heroic as lighthouses were, they were also importantly, incredibly, tragically lonely. It must get tiring, she thought, the burden of carrying all these lost souls back to the shore. Staring at the ocean, on top of the lighthouse amid the receding tide, she wondered how many steps it would take to reach it. (To reach You.) How the horizon beckoned You, then playfully resisted until You sank into the waves. How You sang over the wind, calling her like a seagull to Your nest. She brushed a strand of hair from her face, tucking it back around her ear. Where it belonged. She imagined it was You, playfully batting at her locks like a kitten. She cried, and the tears lost themselves in the ocean. They will be carried through the waves, and maybe, they...
4 comments
Read more

Cain and the Stock Exchange

  A smoke of cigarette, and here he weeps And checks the blue-red arrow-mountains tall And watches the tumble of the Shares And sends another of his seeds To the hungry Savings god Cain’s altar holds a grand But Abel’s gain Triples that of Cain’s And here’s the thing, my lamb: The fruit of labour tastes as sweet as Eve’s, and half as cheap as weed The news presenter shares, Coiled around his brain Enables Cain And Abel’s stain Of blood and wool and half-sown grain To please the Boss in his throne of half-won pain And puts a curse upon the brother’s name, and Shares will soar And slither up around the tree of never-ending food and drink and tar and oil and more                   And Cain will lose                 And Abel too           ...
Post a Comment
Read more