The Empire of Modern Passivity

There are words
We use for eyes, and to use them
Is to believe them.

Spectacle: a word
In the supernatural sense, the Holy
Nomenclature.

Of this was redeemed
A modern purpose
For meaning. It was not our meaning.

You still evade
What cannot be experienced
From your own experience:

A village, a story
Sung by poets
In the village square,

A hundred holy days
And squalid feasting,
Hours that never knew

A wage or time without
A sunset. You evade
Only what is now forgotten:

The violent waste
Of a thousand tongues
Torn from separate Godheads,

And a thousand altars
On the daily
Pantheon of living, speaking

Blood-filled words
Like a thousand arms for working,
Feet for walking

Through the dirt
Of untamed sense
And reprobation –

Anathema: word without profit.