The Four Horsemen

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© James Wainwright

When, on that Final day, the heavens’ thunderous black trumpets announced a siege of absolute darkness—only to roar crimson with a temper of hailstones—

And there followed a terrifying silence, as if the hoar-frosted epoch of after the stars had begun—which, for so long, had seemed eternally nailed to the sky;

And the globe’s noble sphere was derailed in its practiced eclipse;

When the good, rich, beneficent earth—mainspring of all enduring sustenance and staff—was engulfed in an avalanche of cinders;

While bodies, creeping up through ruin staggered forth, heaving for breath, seeking oxygen already torn from the mystery of the atmosphere;

Only to be drowned in convoluted plumes of ash-clotted smoke—

And from darkness’s depths, all were awoken to the treble of the vengeful birds of prey, descending through the gravity of that eternal night;

While the dead lay in the streets; their bodies not properly lain in the tombs;

When, on that final day, all the words ever created, all syllables sprung from the gnarled lexicon of Jesse’s human tree, these too were consumed in the white, fiery blasts—

For, as had been foretold—the meek dragged forth in their rags, the poor lamented for bread, the fortitude of the strong did not give recourse, the wisdom of the just went unheeded—

When all these things came to pass, as they once did—as they do now—

And still the four horsemen do not come.