Inhumanity

In the name of God they came
and slaughtered all that they found there,
every fleeing man, every pleading woman, every crying child.
Even the turning earth was stunned to stillness
by the sight of babies torn from their mother's breast
and slain before their disbelieving eyes.
And when the land was death-empty,
they built a gleaming temple there,
atop a mount of sun-bleached skulls,
that they might worship the Author of Life.

In the name of God they came,
to fulfill their destinies in a land of gold,
and they planted flags and crosses
in a world of infinite horizon.
But the golden earth was already filled
with bronze people and ancestor spirits and the thunder of life.
So they stole the gold and slew the spirit
and made the new land manifestly empty,
and drove the bronze people to deserts of disease and despair,
or sent them to their ancestors,
planting them under the cross
of a God of Infinite Mercy.

In the name of God they came,
in wooden ships, with chains of iron,
and leather-bound words on gilt-edged paper,
and they suffered the little children to come to them.
The black-robed blessed the forced passage
of the black-skinned across a gray ocean
to the cotton-white fields of the land of the free.
And the overlords prayed on their fears,
and vowed that their black lives would be better
when they were pale and dead,
if they would only sing the hymns of The Redeemer.

In the name of God they came,
in fiery chariots with wings of steel,
to split the world and slay the lords of avarice.
With twin swords of hate and fear, they shattered the dawn,
as ashen faces stared skyward in disbelief.
They set the oil-soaked world ablaze,
igniting a towering rage that burned across oceans,
scorching the earth to sand.
And the armies of righteousness rode out,
following a pillar of fire and a pillar of smoke,
and the war horses, frothing and gray,
led the charge for the Prince of Peace.

In the name of God they came,
to tear lovers from each other's arms,
and brand them with the scarlet A of abomination.
And they tore apart the words of freedom
and cracked the foundation of liberty,
papering it over with pages torn from a grim fairy tale
that promises eternal damnation to all
who dare to love too like themselves.
And they wrote in stone that the lovers should be forever other,
forever less, forever afraid to kiss, to hold, to have,
as if one could choose to love or not to love,
as if it were not a choice to choose to worship a God of Love.

In the name of God they came,
and they prayed and they preached and they sang,
of Love and Mercy, of Life and Peace.
Loudly they sang, against cruelty and war,
to mask the screams of the dying.
Long they preached, against hate and death,
until the rivers ran red with blood.
And they looked upon their handiwork and they were well pleased,
and they prayed upon the burning, empty earth,
though there was no one left to hear,
and they pronounced it good and just and merciful,
in the name of God.