Enemy Alien

 

Behold the Enemy Alien –

Strange sojourner from another land,

Banished from the garden of his birth,

Bound by a chain to this fallen earth.

 

Commissioned or condemned

Or by appointment he walks among us here,

Whether God or self or devil be to blame,

Sustained, repulsed, and rebel to the hateful game.

 

A captive clown and bringer of wry smiles

To knowing lips and stylish minds he stands,

Opposed and opposite to each and all,

To the very brick and mortar in the crumbling wall.

 

Outside the gates he lifts his idiot cry,

Outside, with desert lips, and shakes his staff

At all who dwell within; his budding rod

Shall bear for them the bitter fruit of God.

 

Behold the Unknown Stranger –

Analog man in a digital world,

With neither numbers nor electrons in his veins,

But blood and poet’s words and harper’s strains.

 

The stench of death he seems to one and all,

Preferring, as he does, these streams of life.

He clings to goodness and to timeless truth

And grows from wise to fool and sage to youth.

 

Outside the gate, beyond the rain-dark wall,

Where little flowers bloom in innocency,

He flees the stinking city of the damned

With Noah, Moses, Lot, and Abraham.