Shame

Through the air and time and space,
A breath, a shade, in a shadow,
Echoes of evil, shades of gray,
And silence weighs as dark will grow.
As throats clear, and as feet shuffle,
Gnostic moguls — posers in the know,
Shame.

And powers consume as they control,
The glass-eyed pinstriped tycoon,
Amnesic soul void of warmth, touch,
Primal primate paws mere doubloon,
Climbing a collapsing card castle,
Sword falls, the king is a buffoon,
Shame.

The angels and sprites of innocents,
Glimpsed in a certain slant of light,
Dewey eyed — they laugh at usurpers,
That surrender their souls to the night,
And spurning grace — the charity of God —
For the sad place, where might makes right,
Shame.

That mystics and church ladies fathom,
Arrayed in rags or their dowdy clothes,
The light and love through all and all,
In life and death, and life they repose,
Serene; as presidents and potentates,
In corrupt clamor, collapse in the throes
of shame.