The Four Pillars

by Walt Garlington (February 2023)

Transferring the Bodies of Saint Gervase and Saint Protase, Philippe de Champaigne, 1661

Holy, triumphant martyrs, Nazarius,
Celsus, Gervasius, and Protasius,
Highly honored patrons of Milan,
Together you are four stone pillars
Upholding the solid square foundation
Of the Western Church. Filled with God’s power,
No evil force could undermine the edifice
Built upon your Grace-filled prayers and relics.
So other Masons, diabolically
Inspired, have conspired to build another
Structure upon another shape, a new
Twist in an old quest, the divinization
Of man – now to occur through the potency
Of technology, changing the course
Of human history, giving birth
To homo deus, who will storm Heaven
And live and rule as gods.
—
_______________ Two houses,
Two masters, two fates!  The latter will oppress
The other until the cataclysm
In Constantinople foretold by the Fathers.
Then Europe will be a-glow with the Light
From Milan’s Four Pillars—years of rest from heartache
And heresy—before the final hours
When the Man of Iniquity is revealed
And sweeps the whole world up into his nets.

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Walt Garlington was born and raised in that part of Dixieland called Louisiana. A chemical engineer by training, he has spent the last several years writing full-time. He has written essays and poems for The Hayride, New English Review, The Tenth Amendment Center, The Abbeville Institute, Reckonin’, Katehon, Geopolitica, and USA Really. He writes regularly at his own web site, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.

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