The Sword Inside

      A purposeless scrub plain laid before the sight,
      Inarticulate, has nothing to offer;
      Neutral evolution's meaning is neuter
      Until interpretive man stands near.
5     Cool swaths and charts of haughty stars
      Whirling infinite on a pin
      To rampaging wolf and twittering lark
      Revolve innocent of sin.
      But one constellation-loaded look or angst-angelic glance
10    Cast up by blameful man
      Can trace God's wrath in each twinkling coordinate
      As plainly as a plan.
      Until the intuitive outcast on the monotone plain
      Divided the iterative day
15    Into the arrowy horror of arbitrative time,
      Inventing vatic history,
      God's mercy and His blood could not from the dust
      Gather us to his breast;
      Bhudda in his monk-smock howled the rice from his throat,
20    A proctor without a test.
      Lacking sin's spectacle or anticipatory hope's
      Human ability to fail
      Life spins in a bituminous bubble of unbecome,
      A whereless, whenless exile.
25    Narrow animal and expansive man both hunt world and sky;
      Anxious and inscrutable they rave.
      The one with tooth, paw and blind beak will kill,
      The other with inner glaive.

 

From the collection "The Sword Inside"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.