Aspects of Evil (A Jeremiad)

Evil is much too easy.
Evil comes,
if all we do is watch it.

Evil runs
as easily as water,
builds like snow,
or clouds
in stormy weather.

Evil spreads
like mustard weed to cover
fields of grain.

It is the name
of those who wait forever
and is the name
of those
who live by terror;

and those, again,
whose narrow path is strait,
enforced with pain.

It takes more than persistence
to bring to light
the evil done in darkness
and expose
what everybody knows,
but will not say;

to find a way
that leads beyond the wrong
to feed and clothe
all those who sorely need it,
mourn the dead
while comforting the living;

to sing a hymn
when singing is forbidden
and, thus, unwind
the bindweed that ensnares us:
our pride and greed.

Justice fails when lies give way to torture,
torture death;
when what once stood as promise
turned into debt
not even generations can repay.

Alas, the plain is rented, the spacious skies,
the purple mountains' grandeur,
and golden grain,
all sold for a beggar’s pittance.
There is no end to our greed
or the price that we’ll pay.

We have lost our way,
so anxious are we for money,
then more and more
while unloading the cost of our dealings
at the poor man's door.

We could not get back,
should that even be something we wanted;
if tongues of fire
could descend to rekindle the flame.
We have sold our claim,
as always, to the lowest bidder.

We do not remain bride of God,
are a broken window,
colored glass
once bonded with lead.

Our God is dead
of the pride we built up in our heads
and the love we sold
to make easy the rich man’s toil,
cheap the oilman’s gold.

The image we have made of ourselves
like ourselves is broken.
Grass grows
like the hair of the dead in between straw toes.
Black crows sit the shoulders
and arms.

We have willed much harm
and have only false reasons to give.
Our season is a season of fear.
We have learned disgust
and lost the trust of our neighbors.
Nothing's living here.
Like a sun consumed of its gases,
or a moon gone black,
now dark in all aspects and phases,
earth's death a fact,
this planet we loved to call blue,

where new life grew in wild and restless abandon;
but, also too,
the place where mankind was first born,
then became the scorned
of all of the lesser creatures
that God called good.

What is left? There is nothing left.
The chalkboard is smeared with erasures,
the chalk in pieces,
even pieces fallen on the floor.
There is nothing more.

The schoolroom itself is abandoned.
On desks lies dust,
not even a paper or book.

Whatever was learned here is lost
and the loss was earned,
piece by piece in ignorance of maps
and the true north’s compass.