Cathedral, how many times now
Have your windows been washed
By the tears of lovers, broken by the rack
How many times has the blood of martyrs
Flowed unchecked, across your cracked floors
How many vile plagues seeped in
Through the stained glass eye
Leering upward into the face
Of heaven’s disappointment
How many effigies of the saints
Witnessed you turning on your own edicts
When other tides had turned against you
And how many statues were destroyed
In the raging quakes of anger
Inside the hearts of the downtrodden
Your basins overflowed with theft and pillage
Your prisons flowered forth rape and torture
You left the world worse off than it was before
If you should ever fall, tumble down
The earth itself would crack wide open
Down to its very marrow bones of outrage
And finally release all your victims from bondage
Something you would never do for them
In the burning holocaust that was their lives.
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