Fabled Bark Upon The Tree: Sacred Poetry

by Cosmic Poet Simon Pole

Trans Solar World Battery image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA

Fabled Bark Upon The Tree

Fabled bark upon the tree,
Older than the century,
What wild scenes did you descry
When the war went raging by?

Did you see the conscript men,
Who with action of the pen,
After lunch, in halls of state,
Are poured through this mincing grate?

Did you feel the poison gas,
Which in the breeze creeping passed?
And they choked, and they uttered
Gibberish while they shuddered.

Lone you stand against the sky,
Little else can rear as high
As you do: a flattened mess
The cratered land doth confess.

Leafless branch and shattered limb,
Roots which grip the rubble’s rim:
What inner weft held you whole,
Whilst armies to slaughter rolled?

What pliant heart could withstand
Armaments which butcher man,
Or hard doctrines which allow
He’s a slightly smarter cow?

One in holes made to cower,
While above your shape towers.
I look to you from the trench:
Out of me the hate is wrenched.

Through shell-roar at break of day,
I hear what the fledglings say,
Those born new in blood and strife,
Who yet sing of budding life.

O fabled bark, there you grow,
Outer shell which time’s care shows:
Two thousand years on you scored,
Over your eternal core.

You endure, as we endure,
Though we yet reject the cure;
Except the birds, them that play,
Born into eternal day.

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From the Like a Lamb collection.