The Pawnbroker's Song Poem by Ian Blake

Pilgrims, do not smash your idols now that you’ve found God,
Though knowing what you know, they must seem hideous and flawed.
Don’t throw them to the bonfire, or bury them too deep,
Though looking at them shames you, and gives you cause to weep.

Consign them first to me – here’s my pitch:
I have dealt in kitsch of all sorts;
You wouldn’t think it, but I would call
your idols trinkets; today they are taints
that rankle bare on your tired, too well-traveled mind,
tomorrow they’ll seem quaint, I swear.

If now their eyes are animate and savage,
gleaming by the power of incantations
numbed down to a dull patter,
don’t be lured by the easy expiation
of shattering.
Give them here, no place for regrets
is better than my hope chest.
On a cold day, you’ll see a yawning place
between the antique Coke bottles and the vase,
and you’ll crave the reawakening of feral
pulsations, the intrications of your knife
as it carved this god to whom you pledged your life,
this were-beast you denounce in favor of the sterile.

Save the ticket to what you disdain:
Those errors that we think most grievous
Relieve us later with the solace
that even in missteps we took great pains.

Until it sits upon your shelf,
Your soul will not be free.
No matter what the Bible says,
Redemption comes through me.