Silent Go the Little Flames

Witches’ Sabbath (1797–1798) by Francisco Goya

Silent go the little flames from Heaven

Pure and perfect into we know not what.

A thousand devils sparkle in the lamb’s black eye

And dizzy falls the future into airy hope.

Unwatching masses robed in withered fig leaves

Stare into the ether, deaf

While the little flames ask, seek, knock.

But the questions are all wrong;

They have lived too many lives

And have but one death many ages hence.

The questions sound not from the mouth of innocence

But as a black echo, the sour, dying breath

Of those drown in the Great Flood of old.

Slow swings the door to the great beast

Who answers in erotic riddles laced with flame.

To they, the cooing, the warmth is Mother

And the Leviathan Father—distant, yes, but strong.

Legion angels rank the sky in every direction.

At the bottom of a cup of endless holy wars

The guardian finds his hard-fought prize

And is swatted away by a tiny hand

The other cupping an artificial teat.

The Ten Righteous wail into tear-dewed beads;

In their mouths, the nectar of the earth

And the cleansing fire of heaven,

Waiting to be loosed upon the world

For good and for ill both.

Silent go the little flames from Heaven

Extinguished in the shrinking pit of hell.