Centurion pride and pauper martyrs

Show me your God!

They compose such glorious prose,

The rhetoric of the cherubim calls to them!

What method does the shadow keep?

To linger by while children weep,

Over shallow graves where parents lay

And speed their rot throughout the day.

If God is here, let him appear

Bless them, send them on their way.

Darkened clouds crowd clandestine halls,

The pitch walls of an ominous abode

A place of holy men, soundly sleeping

In forfeiture of solemn weeping.

Their martyr’s deaths, now immortal,

Vanity without vanity.

What worth is the man that preaches good will

To an indifferent rabble.

He knows his time is at an end

When morals, known by every man,

Become their own, and not some God’s.

A clever ruse, we’ve seen the cues:

Poverty and modesty?

A lavish palace where they hold their seat

God’s men live in this keep.

Make their thrones upon hoards:

Golden idols, iron, and ivory.

Is this charity? What of good will?

You have wrought this.

This is Our land.

Sheep no longer.