The Castle of Brithombar

After the plague,
Water gathering in puddles, running like waves on an oily seabed,
Out of the wound, a gouge in the sky, and into our hands;
Droplets between the lines of a map, navigated by probing fingers,
To invite the maggots to gather, festering in the flesh, crawling,

Upon the holy land!-
Blasted from shore to shore by winds blowing from the west;
Sand in our ears, sand in our eyes, sand on the tips of our tongues,
While soldiers and priests alike look down at the dead god.
We are climbing out of the soil to look up

At the Castle of Brithombar,
Windows of stone set atop pillars of foreign steel, framed,
Sinewed, with the gold of the atheists, the non-believers;
Spewing plumes of red smoke, packing the heavens above
And clouding the stars from our drenched eyes behind the water;

Faceted and cut
Like rotten diamonds, glittering at the whims of untrained eyes!
Calling upon the Fallen with stern guidance, our new commander
Taking its place, squatting, on the limp palm of divinity past,
Where fingers malformed once were are flights of stairs

Unto the feast halls!
We walk, we walk, shoulder to shoulder, back to back;
Invisible spear points jutting into our spines, we walk, we walk.
As the faithless we leave to forge our faith anew,
Where we may kneel before the face of another stillborn

Within the Castle of Brithombar:
Resplendent with the hollowed bones of the dead, wherefrom
Hang candles of clay instigated with the blood of our wives;
From the walls hang carcasses of the children of our brothers,
Ill-begotten, for that would be the essense of our entreaties!

Henceforth will speak
Only a doctrine of the centuries-old laws of human civilization,
Whereupon the wheel once spun keeps spinning on and on!
Creepers and vines will find hold beneath the thrones heaviest
And with blighted hands invade the seat where the kings fall!

Thus, their promises,
All but gone like the whispers of hope lost from our hearts;
Suppurating sweat, tears, cleansing each other of our memories:
We are reminded, alas, that faithlessness alone is faith itself,
For the first amongst them is now the king of man

Within the lost Castle of Brithombar!