On the third day, the devil rose
to shoulder aside the monument in his name,
"In memoriam, death's death. Rest. Please rest."
He dusted off his robes, calm as sin
committed with the best of intentions,
and set off down the treadworn road
that had taken us from daybreak
to lead us toward twilight.
Looking his most average, almost
not there at all, he was all at once with us.
I cried out, "Brother, there is another beside you!
We know him from the family resemblence.
The Fallen in man's form has risen, he's here."
But you shook your head high, no, no,
it is a shadow, it is necessity,
it is the moment's stain we must leave over earth
to see ourselves grow gold in the neversetting sun
and without a flicker of your gaze from the burning horizon,
your soft green irises bleaching to blindness,
you smiled. And so I wept, in broken voice begging
the devil's forgiveness, pleading
the devil's pardon that we'd buried him alive,
hoping tears might dilute the thickness of his malice,
until the gloaming wrapped us all in heavy dark.
I could see neither him nor you nor road
nor the clumsy, trembling hands of a murderer
raised before his own dried and tired eyes.
There was only the agony of this stony place
sucking all warmth from me
through my bare and blistered feet.