Machine
“Did you tell him when his fingers formed the world, that he would die on Terra, groaning with his hands crushed and whimpering in my great machine?” – Calvin Miller, The Singer, Chapter XX
Assembly begins the day Lucifer
is fired from the Father’s project.
Since then everything on earth has been sacrificed
to construct this apparatus.
Millennia of patient assembly
leads to today’s precise Pharisaic gears
meshing Roman justice with Judas cog
to draw Son into Evil’s engine.
He is denied even a simple wheel
to drag the cross, while Roman soldiers work
elbow fulcrums and hammer-wielding arms,
pulleys and ropes to hoist Him high.
See how His naive followers
keep glancing up as if even now
some heavenly windlass will appear
to free Him from the cross?
Until His final “It is finished!”
screamed into the dark
means the switch can be flicked,
for this device’s work is done.
But wait—what is the meaning
of this gaping earth, unearthly praises
of wraiths walking Jerusalem streets
the temple veil, ripping from top to bottom?
Hell’s alarm bells ring as the belt
flings from the still-spinning flywheel
and careens crazy, powerful
out of all control toward heaven.
“In the morning, the wreckage of the great machine lay in splintered beams beneath the wall” – Calvin Miller, The Singer, Chapter XXII
© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (all rights reserved)
(Note about the Calvin Miller quotes: I had the idea of Satan’s machine and wrote the poem – some years ago. At the time I was reading The Singer by Calvin Miller and was surprised and pleased by the machine reference in his book. I decided to bracket the poem with them.)
Violet Nesdoly 