1917 …a poem

  An ocean of land, of life measured in waves

  Like the waves and oceans
  of breezes stirring the silver-tinged leaves
  of birch branches; their siren call drawing
the traveler deeper into the forest
that beckons with the promise of infinity
  

 The waves and oceans of history
That have flowed over the land, of armies
from north and east and west, lusting to tame steppe and forest
And place the yoke on those who from forest and steppe are born,
Raising ax and scythe and sword to defend
Their earthly mother; maht’ zehmlyah
The opera of the seasons; of winters appeased
With souls deposited in the Bank of Eternal Hope:
hope kept warm by the promise of  Spring, with its offer
of redemption; redemption from suffering and servitude
and visions of a perfect world,
Watered and fed by incense and hymn and the committing
Of the soul into the arms of One who is equal parts
Love and grace and forgiveness and final redemption,
And of power that is awe itself

Meanwhile, back in the palace, heaven’s delegate in the
here and now wills to stay strong; as his forbears stayed
strong beyond the strength of wild horsemen from the east,
beyond the strength of Northmen in dragon-prow’ed boats
and from the west cavaliers fancy pants-ed and bewigged
Strong like the fir and spruce that go on and on
and on in his endless forests; strong like the far
spaces that go on for days and weeks and months and years;
that go on so far that they promise to tear down the curtain
that parts time and space and eternity. 

What peace without blood?
What life-renewing Spring without a hell of cold and ice?
What shield from an uncertain tomorrow without the terror
of power wielded today,a power that doesn’t spare even
those of the same royal seed;

of the power of death deadly enough to eat the lives of so many
in games of chess whose pieces are the millions he proposes
to live and die for per election by He who is holy;
And pieces played by the decidedly unholy
who would wrest their land from the grasp of a cruel fate
and pilot millions to history’s—holy history’s— far shore
Calling on a thousand years of prayer and the blood of many martyrs;
while straining to lasso paradise into the present.

Thirsting to end the slaughter with its mounds of corpses,
there by the grace of a royal tiff among cousins while
monocle’d men in tattered shirts and crumb-covered
cravats argue over tea in dingy sitting rooms,
over the best way to bring heaven down to earth
Of how to create a brave new world based on the
unholy scriptures of those from other lands.

Let other nations, other peoples belong to Man
Where is a future for this land, a tomorrow
that glows with the light of heaven?