Crusading

Teach me death
Is not death
But a door to glory.
Make my life a museum 
Of holy acts.
Spur us on 
Not in rash or rage but 
Through your consuming blaze.
 
Pain is not pain but 
Feeling your scars
Tracing the path of those furious nails
That fury soon swallowed
And turned to fuel
By which we fight
Not further and higher
But tumbling,
a righteous cascade 
that bows ever lower,
bleeding through the bowels of earth’s hell,
not slowed by position or rank
ambition, rather, dispelling that novel
and ancient myth of progress
by constant condescension—
lower and lower
through the bottom of hell
expelled
yet promoted into beatific 
vision.