Or, if he stands through tomorrow, there is still a new lie
I will dream within him at his metamorphosis of martyrdom.
Then, I will pierce him in the heart on his tower
to discover if the blood and the water of God perk out.
The Thirty-Ninth Day
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I was allowed 40 days and I will need them all.
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Tomorrow, then. He weakens as his hunger grows.
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Even now his fingers crackle, twigs of bone,
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his gut churns, like leaves curling in drought.
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With every step and every step, thirst ripens his brain
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till water is all, each drop the worth of the world.
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His teeth chatter, thirsting even for his own spit,
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ravenous for bread, and bent, yet still he stands,
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praying for some prayer that would melt his lips.
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Yes, he will crack on the day his belly hopes to fill,
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then bend his neck, grazing in the Eden of the beast.
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I will teach him to nurse at an idol's stone tit.
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He will suck frigid blood from a demon's heart.
No avalanche of thunders for the clever ones,
no seething echoes, no saltings of brimstone.
First temptings must appear frank kindness
to these thin-shanked saints, these self-named sons.
I must promise earth-firm quietus after appalling vision,
offer bland lakes of summer ice and calm.
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First I will dream his cinders into golden flows,
poke him forward, to scale plateaus bricked with power,
to expect blue crowns in the mirrored tilt of the skies.
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Then I will taunt him to take mercy on himself,
to convince the hawk-seeing Father to pass him by.
Wherever his fissure, I will find it, pry it till it groans.
When a saint first sees himself as a magnet for mercy,
then, precisely then, he can be turned forever.
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Climbing, he cloaks himself in a repeated swirled psalm
chanted high over the cracked clefts of drifting hills,
but in this runaway place prayer drains through the dirt.
Once on top, he will fear only the greater fall.
Just two options: Saint Sinner or Saint Cadaver.
He must choose; nowhere else to go but where he stands.
While the flies of rotting death flicker in his skull
I will spin his dreams until his every sin is shown.
His eyes will round at the soft jolt of my refrain.
Doubts will turn his chanted verses into thorns hurled,
barbs flung slanting toward his eyes.
Then he and I will burn together, howlers at the roaring feast,
yoked sinners, consumed in our colors bright or dull.