Crescendo Against Heaven

Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

 
As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until its sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.
 

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.
 

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.
 

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.
 

Published by NeoVictorian/Cochlea, Poetry Life & Times, The Eclectic Muse

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

An apparent protest against the silence of God here. At the very least an expression of dismay over the seeming outrage of death. At the very end, however, an admission of the possibility that the "greatest of Poets" is misunderstood. That, to me, is the crux of the poem. Our understanding, at this point in our evolution, is yet insufficient.

[Michael R. Burch]

Yes, the poem is both a protest and an admission that there may be things we don't understand.