Mercy Shackles

I think this is something the Christians
would call the apocalypse,
deep in the infernal furnace where
gutted eyeless men dream.
Ants have built tremendous heavens
over graves, chewing dirt and bone alike
They rage and war, fulfilled with sinful honor
They creep and move against Heaven and her eyes
with great bestial slime and terror
that is of the dirt and dust of dead men's names
Done is the spirit, the music and the vision
once so abundant in the soul
Now flies and bones exist
in the fullness of the earth,
so empty and lost of  light,
so forgotten from the sermons of princedom and power
and politeness that was blessed.  Blessed be
he who was in a legion of life's glory
with golden shields and swords that would wield
god's great strength.  But evil brought sin,
and Satan touched smooth cheeks
to speedily sail the living to the tomb
and devour the sons and daughter in plague
and cholera and maladies of fever and melancholy
and many great miseries.  Here it is where we
shall all die, immediately, and maybe it is better
to be unborn than to be born to tears and fears and
fire and flood and deathly dusk
So many men live below the ground
in fire and fate of loss and failure,
where they are themselves in another world,
a nether world of err and guile and thunderous torment,
from a great descent of despair into
death and dust.