What falls out of the sky was neither rain
Nor mercy: cold faces set hard
Against transgression only mirror it.
True victims are dead and buried,
But we take their status on till,
Like a sickness inside the family,
It rubs along with grief.
Once, mercy was a distillate of heaven;
Now, its corroded rain burns the flesh.
Who can withstand revenge once forgiveness
Has worn away? Who could outrun it now?
Shallow sunlight falls from the sky
Filtered by a rising dust, drab sunlight
Barely illuminating wrong or right.
Shades of meaning are not in nature’s gift,
Merely a trick of demonic light.
Victims are made by revenge; some find heaven,
Some hell; some become the grim story-board faces
Of our dear departed or the deserving dead.
Some we hold in tight-lipped piety,
Pile them deep below the earth and weep.
There is no end of weeping.
Others, the overlooked, lie fleshless
In the boneyards where we laid them.
And rain will fall. Merciless.
© BH, 2016
What? Eight lines from way back. I forget where they came from. Turned into something now. Well, you must. Anchor words somehow. Yes?
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