Author Information
Eulogistic (Not): Words For Didymus Diurnal
I have despised you, Didymus Diurnal.
And you deserve my hatred in the full;
my hope that you plunged into flames infernal,
into relentless punishment, eternal
torment upon your unrepentant soul.
But such a grudge still gives you certain power
over me. Nineteen eightynine, in May,
I fell into your clutch that nineteenth day.
Trusting our oath as (once) Masonic brothers,
I did not know how easily it smothers
when one's conscience does not mind to betray
it. Suffering your wrath almost four years;
rebuked---screamed at---for even smallest errors;
my daily drives to work were frought with fears,
my sleep at night tormented by fierce terrors.
In February, nineteen ninetythree,
I served my long awaited, final hour
in your department. They tell me you died
alone, and laid in your dark house a week.
Few came to bury you, and no one cried.
No one had even one good word to speak.
Although I think you left your foul life lost,
and into Hell's awaiting maul was tossed,
I will not soil my spirituality
by taking any kind of secret glee
out of the distinct possibility
of your distressed, and God-damned, destiny.
