The Children's Crusade

A psychological interruption

of the age; an unquenched devotion to

return to a time without division,

when child and toy unified in a blue

soft remembrance beneath a vision

of angelic cloud. What is left to do

but wear the mantle of a child at war

with an infidel world in Thermidor?

Forgive what I have been; change what I am;

direct what I shall be. Let the child speak

through me as a voice from an epigram.

I lie in a dark, lost garden, and seek

to dream of a holy land, where the gods damn

patristic power and restore the meek

to a throne of gold. There the child shall reign,

oblivious to consciousness and pain.

Embark upon this sojourn if you will,

and raise the oriflamme above the press

of battle blood, but one can never kill

the creeping clouds that shadow and regress

the garden back to present time. Until

the night descends, and blankets consciousness,

yoking object to its subject, the dream must die,

and the voice of youth lose its battle cry.

Child of man, caught between the self and world,

the holy land is burning, and children

turned to slaves. The standard of war is furled

and all former foes reborn as brethren.

Peace is made with the present netherworld

over the death of a dream in heaven.

This world is not your world; for yours is breath

of endless night, unconsciousness of death.