Swans Commentary: Morpheus In The Underworld, by Charles Marowitz

Swans Commentary » July 16, 2007

Morpheus In The Underworld

by Charles Marowitz

Poetry

(Swans - July 16, 2007)

The Dispenser of Death and Merchant of Misery,
when he passed over to the nether world,
was surprised to find 3000 of his legion,
in a circle awaiting his arrival.

Those whose burials he had blithely ignored,
and those who perished in the blistering sands
of the country he had brought to ruin,
demanded answers to the questions which
were never posed in that other world;
the one from which he thought he would ascend
to Heaven—not fall into this barren plain
where sullen men in droves demanded answers
to questions he could only but decry.

Soon he realized just where he was.
An arid plain, worse than Fire and Brimstone,
where bitter men and stripling boys demanded
to know the reasons for their ruin
and the misery imposed on those
they loved who huddled still beside their graves;
graves he had so callously ignored.

Those piercing questions and their morbid calm
rent like vicious daggers to his soul
and when he realized the pungent questions
would never end but echo in his brain
for what, he feared, might be Eternity,
he turned in desperation to that God
from whom before he'd always reaped some solace
and begged of Him to be delivered from
this barren plain into the Pit of Hell.

But still the questions, like the bites of serpents,
issued from the sullen and the Dead—
until, wide-eyed, he cried, in agony:
"Why, O God, hast thou abandoned me?"

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Swans -- ISSN: 1554-4915
URL for this work: http://www.swans.com/library/art13/cmarow81.html
Published July 16, 2007