You can always recognize the saved.
They smell of soap. A serene half-smile
is welded on their faces, their eyes
wet with that stratospheric light
that makes the white anvils at the peaks
of thunderheads in the late afternoon heat
almost holy. The New Vernon Presbyterian
Church Choir assumed that expression
as it rose to sing-old Mrs. Greer,
Tommy Emory and Penny May who’d take
the bus to school with me on weekdays.
The hair on the back of my neck froze
as the starched-robed ranks of that community
stiffened up to sing, their eyes moist,
fixed upward in the rush of certainty.
You could almost envy them.
For suddenly everything was black and white
as a Rubens painting of the apocalypse:
so high above you have to crane your neck
is a country club in peaks of morning snow.
Poised in that stadium of stone and cloud
the banks of the saved gaze straight ahead
and sing, a hillside of white wheat
writhing in the wind. At first you think
they’re wooing you to join-until you notice
what’s going on below, see what they’re doing.
Those green thrones of daisies where the saved
recline slip off into a gray rock face,
a granite gorge, the lower ledges half
obscured by fumes seeping up from an open
sewer bubbling at the base. The lake’s alive
with bodies, some human, the rest reptile.
Horned demons with forked tongues, fetid
steam jetting out of their ears, are going
to work on the front row. One is goosing
a floundering woman whose tongue protrudes.
Another is taking, with shark’s teeth,
a chunk from her thigh. Later they’re going
to enjoy some activities too gross to mention.
They’re in no hurry, they have plenty of time.
A man whose eyes bug can’t work his thighs
from between two burning sides of beef.
There’s mounting panic, now, to get out.
It’s a mob, a fountain of postures threshing
upward, clutching at the cliff’s thin ledges,
fingers slipping. Bodies, buttocks dripping
slime, hang by their nails halfway up the rock
face, trembling to climb straight into the clouds
that seem so low. A few have made it.
Still out of breath, no sooner do they haul
themselves up on the lawn, they whirl
around. They’re happy now. They wear
the same peaceful vague smile the singers have.
Some pick up staffs and wield them like long
gaffs to gouge at the eyes of the sinners.
Body after body is pried loose, sent kicking
through the air all the way back down
to the bottom of the cliff where they float,
prone, blowing bubbles in the muck
and no longer seem to care.
Above, the clouds’ frilled edges shine,
the petals of some phosphorescent flower
carved against the bitter stratosphere.
The music swells. Each aria’s whetted,
a fine instrument of pain. Inside her
the soprano keeps a silver sword
which she sends out to hurt all sinners.
Every obscenity I know I’d scream at her—
at all those pink faces scrubbed behind the ears—
but their anthem is so loud they couldn’t hear.
The bass triumphantly tramps on in brazen boots
leaving bleeding tracks along the slumped
backs bobbing in the lake. The saved can’t hear.
They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.
Nothing could enter their sweet minds so long as
they keep up their beautiful, idiotic singing.
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