The Dragon's Flood

From the Dragon's mouth words pour out In a river in which truth seems to shout: The shameful curse and accusation The judges legalistic condemnation The victims raging imprecations To drown and make you his prize.

In desperate deceit we lie and make Excuses for self-preservation's sake We deflect with condescending over-simplification To manipulate another's expectations Managing with half-truths our own reputation Denying there could be any association Between our actions and the Father of Lies.

And in these moments when we double-speak Fearing the loss of the fame we seek And terrified of the cost of the implication We deny the very insinuation Of any merit of the accusation We call down curses and condemnations That we have any association With this teacher condemned to die.

It is then and there, at dawn's first light When the rooster’s cry breaks the silence of night We remember our confident exaggeration Defiant against any prognostication That we could be tempted to any prevarication Or withhold sincerely offered oblation Denying our love, our chosen vocation Merely to protect our own reputation And we see through another's knowing eyes.

And from this horrified, humiliated heap A flood of tears pours out in words we weep. Of the hasty vows we swore in the commotion Of the sting of exposure and anger at the notion That one could be guilty of such insincere devotion Drowning in shame and regret and resentful emotion No more words, no excuses, no alibis.

a debt of influence owed to Malcolm Guite's poem, "What If?" You should check it out. artwork: Detail of the woman and the beast spewing water into the earth, from the Welles Apocalypse, England, c. 1310, Royal MS 15 D II, f. 156r