I'd really welcome constructive criticism and engagement on this.
PAROUSIA
I
Imagine this: a room within, the bounds of voice; a crow
cries beyond; a clock counts; a hall empty, a hall full.
A voice
comparing: the sons of Belial like unto the word of denial;
preparing: the children of darkness for the prince of light;
declaring: the advent of Israel from the body of the Nile;
a voice aboom abounds above
bowed heads of the belov'd.
II
It dropped from the sky like a stone burning down
with the Will of Heaven. It consumed the dark lives
tangled around roots of pride. It humbled the high
and low. On our bent knees we move-still forward-led
towards the Last Day of Days, the First of Ever.
III
On bended knees towards a You-tree,
of You twisted
on the pole of the calendar,
through a snake-lane we turn,
bloodied, tilting
like shadows
repeating the angles
of flesh.
IV
Tell me a history of that saviour who bides
till the calendar ends in a dancing of flame,
for a twelfth to come self-slaughtering bride.
Make me accounts of all redemptions denied
to justice's pawns in the backstreets of time,
in slave-ships or coal-mines, on all the wrong sides;
of yesterdays bartered that something might come;
and faith sold like charity; and like hope decried,
till the day of atonement by a redeemer who hides.
V
Twelve is the count of the tribes and signs
that order the years till the ending of times;
divided then divided, by the two that parted,
it numbers in three the brand of the beast
to the faithful awaiting the bridebed's feast,
abandoned in Egypt, their rescue unstarted.
VI
By Your Whither-tree of winter
supplicant we count out
days of a world of waste
days to a mewling
new-born calendar, days
to another
zodiac and zenith
culminating by degrees
its constellated eyes.
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