Alone, alone

ALONE, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

--W.H. Auden

What to say about this poem? Clearly a "Christian" one. But just as easily read as a metaphor for the national foolishness that has led us to Iraq, to Katrina, to Rita, to the "train wreck" that is our society today, built as it is on the poverty of others; and those "others" don't just live conveniently overseas, out of sight, out of mind.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own? "How could the Eternal do a temporal act,/ the Infinite become a finite fact?" Seems to me that's been precisely the promise held out by this Administration, and based almost entirely on terrible Christian theology: that the Eternal can do a temporal act, and we, through our military power and hubris, can rearrange nations and usher in a "new world order," a secular "kingdom of heaven," if you like. Seems to me we have all agreed that "the Infinite [can] become a finite fact," and we avidly sent our youngest and poorest off to die in order to realize that dream.

And now we pay the price for it.

"Woe to those who yearn for the day of the Lord!
What will this day of the Lord mean for you?
Darkness, and not light!"

--Amost 5:18