An ashen field falls over the horizon,
Spotted by cloves — pink and white,
Spotted by martyr cries and feckless rites;
Cathedrals, now but wooden ribs in the desolate night.

Cometh by haste the bounty men —
Heads of natives swing from hips,
Gold and toil lost to their smite;
The joining flesh of humanity rips.

The dawn, now new,
Left only heathen land.
God shackled to Heaven’s gate,
Man now to serve the capital hand.

Prayers sung in tongues forgotten,
Clerestories bare forgotten saints.
Weathered cathedral knells laments,
Blackened — a deathly taint.

But when the night desolate,
When no man wanders beyond the forest trees,
A woman of stars begins to blaze;
The bells start to ring.

The cathedral now an orchestra;
The cadavers now awake.
The star woman descends from the void,
The once dead climb from dying brake.

Her being graces the ground;
The ghosts follow her presence.
A waltz with her children begins —
The cathedral echoes psalms with reverence.

The day lay quiet in rocky hill farms,
Brisk zephyr winds danced through the leaves.
Within the homestead knelt the farmer,
A barrel clenched between his teeth.

“God has forsaken me.
Cursed am I to know what I am not—
A creature living toward the end;
I am flesh, and I shall rot.”

Before the trigger could make its click,
Before the barrel could scream its blast,
A surge of flickering azure light
Revealed a being there at last.

A lady formed of hollow blue,
With voice as vast as a choir:
“My child, my dear—why?
Why do you cradle fire?”

The farmer, shocked yet strangely fearless,
Looked up and asked a question one:
“Oh tell me, why do I still live?”
At that moment he dropped his gun.

“My dear, why do the cows you **** die—
But to make meat for you and I?
The reason you walk upon this land
Is the reason cows serve fellow man.”

Upon the supernal court,
Love, facing Death,
Spits obscenities and cries:

“Thou shalt be forsaken for thy thefts;
I see thou art but a thief,
Taketh life and giveth grief.
Beauty thou knowest not,
Turning wood to ash, and man to rot.”

Death, as cold as night,
Responds soft, a quiet croon:

“I am not a thief, for when it's dark,
The sun is not taken, but changed for the moon.”