What is this business
Of Kingdom coming?
Have we not killed off
Our wicked want of kings
In that bloody satire of Bastille?
And don't we hate to wait
For anything these days?
Long lines and red lights,
The fearful dreams of our times?
So why to pray or say or summon
Something late and aged,
Encumbering?
We are a modern and sufficient people,
Too sophisticated and self-contained
For something so medieval
As a king.
Castles and crowns
Are but rusty museum trinkets,
But who is the marquis du jour?
And what if thrones remain
While jesters attain
A less majestic rule?
What if the primitive things
Of worship and reigning,
Courtship and hangings,
Remain unseen,
An inch beneath
The flimsy topsoil of our sciencing?
'Twas a hasty burial indeed,
Nay a farce,
A great exchange of the great Dunce;
Perhaps this modern state
Is an Atlantis
Of our own deluded losing,
Lost for mere amusing,
Our temple built firm
In the sacred soil
Of choice and choosing;
We're a lost city
In faux utopian robes.
We're dreamers deceived
By an image of grand arrival,
Thinking we have built something sweet
And neat,
A reverie to be believed in,
But what if our tower up and up,
From dreary, weary Babel,
Is perchance just upside down,
Meaning we're miners underground,
Unknowing,
Mistaking ash for air,
Seeing through eyes glazed white,
Mistaking darkness of a grave for light?
What, dare we ask,
Has come so near
As to warrant such acclaim?
How are our orphans,
Our sick,
Our lame?
Are not our pharaohs
And pharisees the same?
No, no, we are nothing new;
No trophy is due,
We're as blind as all
The olden ages' seers and sages;
We are kingless coliseum builders,
For truth once more
Has stumbled in the public square.
Kingdom come
Remains a better phrase
Than all our wisest claims.
Undone,
Our cityscape fading would be grace.
If the glimmer and sheen
Is falsely seen
And Hell is just as near as ever,
Then "Kingdom Come!"
Is the mountaintop before us;
It is our height of humility
To attain.
Grace would be words of weakness
On our lips,
Pleading for another reign,
An Other's rule,
A castle built
With living bricks.
Grace would be awakening
To face again
The lions in this den
That we have dug.
The victor's flag,
By grace before us waving,
Consists in being real,
And seeing clear;
The royal banner
Is an unveiling of the unreal.
Would but the curtain falter,
Undone
Within our sturdy city walls,
And could we then
Repent
Before the altar,
And let the empty fall?
Alas, but at last,
There is a Kingdom come
Sleeping here beneath us.