You contradict yourself like an eclipse,
pretend this bare first level’s “ease in Hell.”
Show me ease in living without hope, lips
parched, whispering eternal desire. Tell
me why earth’s time dwelt in honor deters
heaven, demands pain on ledge of despair
due to dearth of forehead’s holy water
splashed by some sap in white collar declared
holy by blind old men hoarding treasure.
Your politics reek of Rome, asserting
Homer, Horace, Virgil, all their pleasures
of verse—a holy life—undeserving
of eternal berths beside All Wisdom
from lack of a Catholic baptism.
Roger Armbrust
November 15, 2007
