Halfway a heathen

Halfway religious

Often the worst half of both

Could I but be more kind

Or the more callous –

And leave you, Reader, to guess

Which is common to each –

Maybe then I’d belong to one.

More kind, because for

All that this world’s fallen

I have felt gentleness at its hands,

Glimpsed divinity in every heart,

Seen beauty in its craters.

More callous, for how can

So many eyes be unseeing

So many shoulders cold

So many minds unaffected

By holy genocide?