Requiem for Faith

For him, the sky paled from azure to ashen, Wept tears of fury on his young son’s bedroom window, Forced its windy despair on the trees, Uprooted the wide ocean in remembrance of him. And the son, the dolorous inspiration of the sky, Mourned under the tear-plashed windowpane, Inventing saccharine sentiments In guilt over sour recollections Of the stubbly double chin Where beer in perpetuity dripped, Of the fat lips in perpetuity condemning, Of the kind-cruel puffy eyes, Which taught his precocious boy Anxiety’s neurotic introspection, Which calls its solace beauty. Now, a quaint form of beauty the son Imagined might appear at the window: The father as a numinous angel Of graceful wings shining with variegated sunlight And a paunch and needing a shave, With raiment as soft and bright as clouds And yellow toenails and bloodshot eyes. To him, the son wished to take flight And embrace the homely angel of his imaginings. But then he chided his fanciful musings as pain’s absurd refuge And instead marveled that he should feel himself lost At the loss of a sometimes sweet, often booming idiot, Or that he should wish the oppressor Again to take up his dunce cap-crown Of parental supervision. But yet he might have it were it performable, So much did he feel himself disintegrated: Born an amorphous confluence of conflicting perfumes, To be blown perforce by incomprehensible winds Out across gray cityscapes, Once irreconcilable, now irretrievable.