A Sad Day in Heaven

by David Solway (April 2016)

The Lord said

let there be night

and there was night;

let there be darkness over the face of the earth

without stars or moon to illumine the pathways,

and it was so;

let the waters of the Heavens remain undivided

and descend in curtains and shrouds over all My creatures,

and it happened as the Lord commanded.

But then the Lord said

I was only joking.

Alas, it was too late,

the earth had already been obliterated,

the dead remained stubbornly dead,

there was no one left to appreciate the joke

or to forgive the Ultimate Prankster His wayward humours,

His Jewish sense of mischief,

except a family and a few animals.

Many species were lost forever.

It was a sad day in Heaven.

Never mind the waterlogged bodies of men,

the animals and plants sunk in the bogs,

never mind the angels who were envious to begin with

and who are always high and dry,

never mind the Fiend whose fires cannot be extinguished

and whose inventory is replete with souls.

None of this matters.

It was a sad day in Heaven.

________________________
 

David Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist. His most recent volume of poetry, Installations, appeared in fall 2015 from Signal Editions. A partly autobiographical prose manifesto, Reflections on Music, Poetry & Politics, was released by Shomron Press in spring 2016. A CD of his original songs, Blood Guitar and Other Tales, appeared last summer. Solway’s current projects include work on a second CD with his pianist wife Janice and writing for the major American political sites such as PJ Media, FrontPage Magazine, American Thinker and WorldNetDaily. 

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