Kalends

Job curses the day he was born.

According to astrology,

The stars arrange themselves to bind

The destinies of humankind

Born under their hegemony.

What malice made those twinkling lights

Murder my children, and yet spare

A father to forever bear

Grief that embitters, and ignites

A hatred for my very birth,

And the cursed womb that gave me life.

Thrust in this vale of loss and strife,

Pushed through that vile and bloody firth,

I live and suffer till I die.

Are the stars locked in crystal spheres

To trace their paths throughout the years,

Quite powerless to nullify,

The ruin and the doom they chart?

Or do they skip across the void,

Giddy, and cruel, and overjoyed

To wither a poor father’s heart?

If they’re condemned to blight

The fate of any mortal born

Under their aegis, they must mourn

The sentences their glint must write.

If merciful, those stars must share

The misery their shining brings,

And their own brittle glimmerings

Must lance their conscience with despair.

Extinguishing those stars that kill

Unwillingly is clemency.

Annihilation sets them free.

But if they’re vicious, it will thrill

My aching spirit to snuff out

Ill-omened and malignant stars,

Child-murderers, and the bêtes noires

Of fathers, even if devout.

Such wicked lights disgrace the night,

So, emptied, let that banner shut.

An expanse cleansed of glittery smut

Contracts so closely and so tight

No spirit banished from its rest

Can enter through that dismal gate,

Once happy, now disconsolate,

Dropped in a world they will detest.

Into that gap, the day before

And the day afterward will close.

So that cursed hour cannot expose

A naked child to famine, war,

Plague, and the agonies this world.

Inflicts upon the bad and good.

If in the womb, I’d understood

The pain awaiting, I’d have curled

Up tighter and would lock my knees.

Shutting the door, I would return

To a green glade and gurgling bourn,

A haven from atrocities.