The Mirror of Souls: An Alliterative Poem (Praefatio)

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

AVE MARIA, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

PRÆFATIO

The day was dark in the dusk of the world

In the shadow of sin walked the sons of Adam

And the offspring of Eve to its yoke were chained.

The groans and the grief of God's children

The sobs and the sighs of endless sorrows untold

Went unheard and unheeded by the high of this world.

Their sight did not see through the shade of desire

And the words for their woes the weight to relieve

Fell dead in their deeds that undone were kept.

In the fog and the fires, in the flurry and the cold

Beneath serpents of sparks that scorched the black sky

With blinking and glittering of false lights surround

And between towers, their testaments of thrift in steel,

Blared horns of haste and hatred unbarred

From monsters of malice in madness consumed

Down streets with smoke in obscurity wreathed

In the shadow of sin in the City of Man.

The faces of the fragile, the façades of the strong

Of none did he notice, nor note did Thomas take

As the burn of the belly and the abandon of lust

Consumed his soul and enshrouded his heart.

For new conquests his conscience was quieted full

And his reason made retainer to his ravenous hunger

The memory of his mother, her mentions of concern

And his father's wise foresight in forbearance advised

Were lost and relinquished with great levity long ago.

As he ventured passed a vagrant, his vexation aroused,

With disdain Thomas did deny the man's duress most clear

Then refused from his food to furnish his request

And tossed to the trash his treasure most prized.

Then arrested he lived a life in the lamp of his mind

In the alleys of squalor and the avenues of filth

For long years did he yearn, his yoke to cast off

Yet the stench and the stain and the suspicion he met

Were as nought to the nothingness to which his neglect

Had cast him to be kept in the cacophony of death

His dignity lost and his desires in their discarding forgotten

He waited for the world to awaken and remember.

His family and his friends did he fail long ago

And in their hurt their hearts became hardened as stone

Now for death, its decision most definite did he await

The only hope for his harrowing its help he longed

Yet as afar could he foresee what fate was prepared

Amidst light and love and full life overflowing

He is enthroned, with thorns on his top is he crowned

And robed as though royalty and received to joy eternal

Yet by the hand of the Helper is his homicide committed

His death by the deed of the Indebted was done.

From the vita of the vagrant did Thomas' vision conclude

And with new sight did he see him, forsaken and alone

Yet in his heart he could not hear what to heed he was called

In the cloud of his conceit he curtained his heart

With the bars of his bondage his benevolence was confined

And forged by the fires of the fear which he nursed. 

So he went on his way with his warning left unheeded

The quiet voice sent to invigorate, its advice he ignored.

As he went on his way for his will to satisfy

Onto black streets Thomas stepped without concern or regret

Yet the mask of the moneyless to his mind returned

And the hardness of his heart its hindrance was cracked

Then the bleat of infernal bells his emboldenment did interrupt

With a screech and a scream the monstrous savage rushed on

And his sight was consumed by its shining lights ablaze

For his death to descend in its darkness he assumed

And was filled with a flood of his faults long suppressed.

Not yet ordained was his demise in the design of God's plan

And in His love He relented and for his release He sent

A messenger for His mission to mediate His grace

The City of Man with its stifling fumes and ceaseless frenzy

At once did it wane and unwound was its time

Unmoving and immobile, motionless it became

And through the shock of his escape from the surety of death

Thomas beheld one not human nor of humbler origin

And he fell on his face at the feet of his guide

The gleam of his glory did glow like the Sun

His eyes were keen as the edge of a blade

In his hand he upheld what was harrowing to behold:

A shard of seeing-glass with its façade like a mirror

And himself did Thomas see, all conceit burned away

His ruin made clear, the horror of his wreckage manifest

He cried out and recoiled and declined to bear witness

And begged for some respite from the doom he was shown

In his mercy the messenger did admit his request

And concealed the glass shard in the shirring of his bright robes.

'Thine guardian am I, and guarded thee from the grave I did

An angel of God and thy companion in this life so assigned.

Now Thomas son of Timothy of the family of Thorne

As a sign was I sent for the sake of thy soul

To lead and to guide thee to the heights and the depths

To show thy sundering - or thine espousal - prepared for thee.'

He was upraised for to stand and upstanding so became

And the hand of his helper to him was outstretched

With a smile most consoling for solace the angel gave

And at his touch all his tension was extinguished all at once.

Yet as the city became a shadow of the self he once knew

Still doubt, for his demise, clutched the depths of his heart

And the hope for his humbling, behold he could not.

To his eyes did the angel his bright hand overlay

Then unveiled to reveal a new vision of his world

As Thomas surveyed his settings beyond the surface was made clear

The true depths of the divide through the doors of the spirit.

The shades of the souls who on the streets walked by

By the chains of their collars, to their cravings enslaved

Led by demons who like dogs to their conductors obeyed

The monsters of mayhem and malice ablaze

Did rejoice in their rage and their ravenous hunger

To conspire for souls in their spite without end

As infernos of fear and unfathomable darkness.

Yet a war they did wage without winning to hope

Against the angels whose charges to keep were assigned

Their bright lights golden burning as they battled untiring

To bring hope for true Heaven in the heights far beyond.

Across a coven of covetousness, a cave of unbounded greed

Passed a family whose love flamed in a fury encasing

In a shield of asylum in the obscenity of the world.

At the edge of his eyesight a view could he see

Of a cathedral with its turrets entrenched and engulfed

In the fires and the floods and the famine of souls

While beside it was seated for a sacrifice enthroned

A child who was chosen, for a crime was it charged

And for its life it to lose for the luxury of the lost

In the maw of the machine of the madness of indulgence. 

'Can thee not see through thy sight by sin obscured

The plight of this people in their poverty most deprived

Of the kindness and compassion and the charity of love?'

And so Thomas to detect the truth was then returned

To behold in his humiliation and his hardship the man

Whose life he had lived yet for his lack gave no care

Now did perceive by his sight a scene which he abhorred

The man who with great mirth and maniacal laughter

Was whipped and wounded by the words and misdeeds

Of the demons who him despoiled, and the dissolute passers-by

With their derision and their ridicule and the disregard of their neglect.

'If thine eyes will not see, nor thy heart become opened

For thy hand to heap out from thy harvest of gifts

Then in the love of the Lord to live will thou not

And entombed in thy destitution will interminate thou remain.'

As he watched he did witness what his wreckage so produced

When in flames was the framework around the vagabond caught up

Yet none would take notice who in neglect him ignored

And while he begged for the beggar his benefit to plead

Beside him he saw a sycamore most lush

Be caught up in conflagration and consumed in flames

Its bough made barren, broken and charred.

Then Thomas felt sheets of rainstorm for their sorrow to relieve

Pour down from the depths and descend from on high

And fall down his face, his affliction expressed

Yet as the angel uplifted and his eyes did alight

At his heart were the hands of the Hellions still clutched

And whether deserved what he desired he doubted the outcast

And for himself he still usurped what for certainty belonged to God

In his neglect he yet denied the notion of His love

And thus remained in his mind beneath the mastery of his sin.

Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.