(a trifle)

I wonder if we’d feel it a lie
To wear the rain-god’s clothes
Or speak in polished dignities,
And for that reason make ourselves,
Who are more rich than ever else,
Look less than paupers, and our speech
As nutrient as poured concrete.
We’ve seen the fishes’ guts
And now no longer trust
His flashing body of vermeil.

It’s all because we’re so self-occupied.
The king dressed like a buffalo
Officiating flame to flame
With crystals tied to every toe
Was not a consciousness like ours.
He really was the sun, the mammoth of the plain.
His thick black organs did not gross him out:
These were in fact his holy things.
He knew of sins, but did not think they were
Knots of noetic salamanders in a mud
Whose essence never could be dredged;
Sin was for him a badly offered sacrifice.
He never thought the symbols could be harmed
By mutability. And after all,
No one was worried of deserving life itself,
For they knew gifts were heavy on them
Like packed diamond, and only sought to join
The long procession in which every breath
Of star and dragonfly is one more step.