The God-Man (Free Verse)

I saw one reading of a youth named Candide
I saw another shaking his head about chrysanthemums
Looking at first to their brothers’ faces
And then up at the sky saying
“Something is wrong with the world”

One shook his fist, cursing his naiveté

Another wept that he was deceived by all he held sacred
Still another silently rejoiced
His heart pleased he had found validity
To justify a nest of adders

One cries to whatever is listening
“No father should have to bury his son!”
Another wails no son should not have a father
One asks how something so pleasurable
So natural and filling, so true
Could be deemed perverse

But they forget that I buried my son
They forget that I was forsaken
They forget that I have seen the viper’s face
I have felt his fangs at my back
His fangs at my brow
His teeth found my flesh before his head was crushed

“What does it matter, God-Man?” they cry
“You who are higher than angels?
You who have seen the face of ages?
Watched men fall and rise?
Watched empires topple into the sea?

What to you are lashings ?
What to you are thorns and spears?
What to you is temptation and death?
The one who created the tempter
The one who conquered thorns and spears and death?”

What is earth and what men have made of it
Who do not know the words of their own hymns
What of my ivory palaces?
What of the crystal sea and the seraphim?
Of the four and twenty elders and the rainbow throne?

Facsimiles, illusions, mirages, veneers
I have made my house in a temple of rotting meat
The painter of the firmament has made his dwelling in manflesh
As a philosopher trapped in an infant’s body
An artist in the flesh of a beast

I have kicked in a woman’s bloody entrails
I have suffered the guidance of elders
I have stood in the synagogues
Where doves are sold
And theologians argue over the color of plates

I have bound myself to the free will of creation
I have crushed my will who has created will
I have crushed my reason who has created reason
I have watched he who was created to be perfect
Despoil and desecrate all that I have made holy

I have given men reason that they may use it
So that they may shout it to the heavens
Rejoicing in their freedom and in their power
My wrath is set aside so that men may return to dust
If it is their wish to seek after dust

I have bound myself so that men may have free will
So that they are never in bondage save by choice
And for the fools and the despoilers, the angry and the wronged
The Creator has succumbed to an infantile enemy
The God-Man has shackled himself with rags and refuse

For he who rived the flesh of my side
And he who uses my gifts to erase my existence
I have crushed my wrath, however justified
So that he may strive after dust
And still rise above dust if he wishes

“I gave my life for thee
My precious blood I shed
That thou might’st ransomed be
And quickened from the dead
I gave, I gave my life for thee
What hast though giv’n for me?

My father’s house of light
My glory-circled throne
I left for earthly night
For wand’rings sad and lone
I left, I left it all for thee
Hast thou left aught for me?

I suffered much for thee
More than they tongue can tell
Of bitterest agony
To rescue thee from hell
I’ve born, I’ve born it all for thee
What hast thou born for me?

And I have brought to thee
Down from my home above
Salvation full and free
My pardon and my love
I bring, I bring rich gifts to thee
What hast thou brought to me?”