User:Joe Spencer/Jude: unwritten semi-chorus

  Jude: unwritten semi-chorus
  
  the siren's warning, faded now,
  still rings before my eyes in ashes--
  and my ears, now nearly bleeding
  for all the sea of black
  that sweeps before, hear
  only darkness felt in shut-up shelter
  
  the numbness of my shaking fingers
  damns the progress of my search,
  my longing for taste of bomb and fire,
  of power--absent power--
  that here 
  was
  
  evidence enough of shells, of flames--
  but testimony only,
  no living fire,
  is not enough to quench the
  burning
  desire of my sorting, ord'ring reason
  
  in a shelter, how can I earnestly contend?   
  
  o cruel, smoldering season,
  a hundred years of sifting, turning
  over every stone--o sweet dilemma,
  war gladly waged by my sire,
  Ratio, he who, lonely,
  finds naught but ruins for his lordly claims
  
  here, in time, made other by my shelt'ring thus,
  I am--and I am seer,
  made thankful by Endower,
  Other Sire,
  Who also makes of shelter church,
  and, still more, of ashes singers
  
  and now in this I'm seen to welter:
  knowing thought unclear--
  I hope because I lack:
  I hunger in my feeding:
  alive despite bombs' crashes,
  look I for bombs: I bow

• The scripture that inspired this poem: Jude 1:3.