Sherry Chandler

Charity’s Philippic

No one can go before me with a brush
to clear my path of ants my feet
might crush. I am a democrat.
I must bear my own bloodguilt
—and that of any sweepers in my hire.

Give me then an infinity of brooms,
each sweeping the path of the one behind.
Piety runs in a straight line
out around the curve of space
into a circle of Vestals
to tend the holy fire of state.

Mars got Rome on a Virgin,
Jehovah got the Vatican,
and the progeny of all that rape:
ultrasonic bombers, winged chariots
from which any mother’s child
can thunder from the sky
a rain of fire on this day’s Sodom,
Troy, Carthage…
leave only rubble and salt
for an eternity of tears.

But oh yes I support our troops,
bear in my dreams the weight
of their killing, their being killed,
as Mary holds through the millennia
the dead weight of her son.
She did not want a suicide warrior or a god,
only a carpenter to repair the doorsill.

        The Pedestal Magazine Political Anthology, October 2004