Crosses beneath the sky

The preacher should speak to the devotee

Moved by the waves of a heartfelt remorse,

And not lynch truth upon a gallows tree

For lust and lies upon time to endorse.

Through the words of a true repentant, hark

Wrongs and sins that have been long neglected,

Tales of blood, lust and evil in veils of dark

To thee, new progeny, they’re directed.

The true believer is he who admits

The sins and misdeeds of his precursor,

For life to him bestows the benefits

Of purest faith, piety’s coercer.

Few now agnise the death of western creeds

When credulous priests came on timber ships:

They dreamt of hoary shrines and glorious deeds

Gnawing on Africa like lethal thrips.

They shattered shrines and battered sacred trees,

They carved blood from ancient authority

And feigned God’s noble love for lust to appease

To the eyes of the cowed majority.

They gave the forlorn tribes the Word of God:

Shoddy misread bibles were read aloud.

Yet as they spoke countless vessels were wad

With ivory, gold, ebony endowed.

Rebels were killed, communities were torn:

What once was dear and beautiful was lost.

The old priests renewed their crusades with scorn

For dreary were these parishes embossed.

Now humble priests walk in silent disgrace,

In jungles where the old Gods are abject:

No longer do their people turn their face

To creeds of eld and songs they now reject.

That is what lust attained from faith,

A horde of lying acolytes,

Who turned tribes into vacant wights:

Scions of a forgotten lore.

The topic is a delicate one and I don't want to offend anyone. I am a Christian, more precisely a Protestant Lutheran though I'm very unorthodox in my beliefs (no pun intended). I hate the history of our Christian religion, it is stained with crusades, papal lust, evil through missionaries and much more. I believe that if we acknowledge these great mistakes and repent, we will become better devotees. This poem is about all the evil that was done to Africa, hidden beneath a cloak of religion. We should have left those people with their own creeds, cultures and beliefs; Africa would have been a happier place today.

keltica