Thursday 25 August 2016

poetry 2016 / 094

The Vanity of Belief

A good Catholic even
after my mother died, walking
to the tiny church in a converted school
every Sunday morning. I believed
in God, and therefore Satan,
the walls of my bedroom covered in notes
and graffiti – all I learned from the
study of expensive texts bought from
a tiny shop at the back of the British Museum.
At home, my Catholic Bible perched next to
The Book of the Law. Do As Thou Wilt
on one side of Themis' scales:
Give and Ye Shall Receive.
I sacrificed much at the altar of adolescence
not least my humility in exchange for
hubris. It took me many years to win at back
but I remain broken, my Faith burned
on the vanities of science, my patience
flung far from the grasp of fools.

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