With an austere glance and an upright heart
We, the people, watch our troubled world.
Conflicts abounding and they all take part
As we sit and watch and rest in peace.
 
Why should we worry
And leave our tranquil home?
Their troubles are their duty.
 
We'll stand on this ground we died for,
Where the rocks don't move, the flags wave on and, the flowers always grow.
 
“Protect and defend our rights!”
Cry the people,
“We worked for our shade and green grass.”
 
There's a dark, real world out there,
you’ll see, visceral and rife with humanity.
 
“We're safer in here,”
We the people say,
“Live and let live! We're better off alone.”
 
And so alone we are
In our corner of the world
Marked by our rocks and flowers and patterned stripes and stars
Spattered across our safe, clean, cemetery plot.
 
And we are safe,
We, the people,
O, so safe!
The dead need not fear.

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.