Waterfall
He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr’d virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
He falls, corrupt, through heavy doors
That men of God have built to slow
Those night-full men with impure pores
From water holy, from baptismal glow.
He shall be washed as white as snow.
He trickles virtue from mudded hands.
It stings his face. His pupils twist,
Show blood in clots and hair in strands;
These visions from his mind desist
By all the martyr’d virgins kist.
He gasps for air as cherubs stab
His faithless heart through droplets’ flow.
All breath bestowed to his guilty flee.
He, burning, falls, on a cliff’s perilous row
While the True Church remains below.
He lays, writhing, in holy pains.
The murderous sin now an animal cist.
He falls and wails, his body rains
From the bluff into the steeple’s kris,
His remains wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
Refrains from T. S. Eliot’s “The Hippopotamus”
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