Are You Saved?

"ARE YOU SAVED?"

Sunrise in the corner of his eye,

a snag at the edge of his voice,

and I understand: he's mad.

A blur of recall, and I'm seeing the others:

the preacher who used to stone my scarlet sins,

kids at church camp, their brimstone choirs

shrill with teen-age lust gone underground,

hot-eyed ladies come knocking to tell me

that flaming hell is real;

and those twisted faces on the tube:

the eyes of the ayatollah, slanting with joy

at the blood of his blindfolded prisoners,

the righteous hatreds of Ireland, lighting the faces

of Belfast like a tenement fire,

Christian gunmen in Beirut, their brown eyes

exploding in the beds of brown-cyed children.

It's always there in the windows of the soul,

that holy blaze, never so bright

as in human sacrifice,

never so proud as in crimson crusades,

the glorious, godlike destruction.