Lamentation On The Feast Of Epiphany Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I speak of the forced exile of God from the worlds He Himself made, starry and incommensurate, beyond our meed,
how proud they are who stand in the godless sunlight
shrieking they made it all or else It made itself
the whole Shebang
and that they are free
and blazingly intelligent
to renounce Him
as if such willful ignorance were the Creed of all creeds.
what myth bright or earthly historical banishment can compare
so that even in a time of plague men rave in peacock vain display they are the authors of healing everything owning the keys to all citadels the mysterious well of life itself
and would bow down to arrogant expertise so called yet not Divine Love. who would kill, would kill the Dove
who prefer the Inferno to reading the Paradiso
who count it all good they count not on Him
Blaze up oh Poetry with indignation
I cried for cancelled Beauty Truth and Goodness to the End
for what abides and changes Not and oh, my friends
that men had become thin wraiths of themselves
in futile silent reading of the Book of the Dead
all other texts than Christ risen and risen again
but Poetry had fled with Him in the post postmodern wreckage
and all my heart's darlings on the same drear boat of Dread.
mary angela douglas 6 january 2022