A Knight Curses God In The 1361 Plague Poem by S. J. Fulton

When I was a young esquire, O God,
as battle raged on every side of me,
I stood upon a hill of heads and limbs
and stared to see you grinning in the clouds,
turning thumbs down on half of us who fought;

Since then, in each gentlemanly war
I’ve glimpsed you slavering eagerly in the sky,
but when I told my comrades of your lust
for blood, they said they hadn’t noticed, Lord,
being too busy with their swords and spears.

From priests I heard that Isaac once lay bound
across his father’s altar, to slake your pride,
and old Elisias called upon wild bears
to gobble up small children—which you sent
since you and he were both bad-tempered rogues.

You said “Thou shalt not kill”? Now there’s a joke!
The gentle Christ could scarcely be your son;
some other god’s perhaps, but not the one
who sent the old-time Jews on their crusades
and now commands us go on ours and kill!

Came the plague a dozen years ago
when victims died abandoned and alone,
all bloated guts and black and stinking pus,
sinews arched in twisted rictus, hope
of living choked out in a putrid puke.

They threw those outraged corpses on a cart,
stacked them like wood, rolled the creaking wheels
out to some noisome charnel pit and tipped
the tangled bodies in, then poured on oil
and made burnt sacrifice, O Lord, to you.

Others did that work. I ran and hid,
and when we cowards crawled out of our holes
with half of Europe dead, we thought it must
be over. Nothing so awful could return,
not in our small span of three-score years.

It has returned. They now fall down again:
a mother’s tender breath murdering her babe,
sweethearts withering from a lover’s kiss,
slobbering death into each other’s mouths.
Once more they topple into gaping pits.

You’ve killed my wife—Joan of the generous arms
and spreading pillowed hair! You slaughtered her


and left me skulking in bleak empty courts.
My feet scrape loud against the stones, while husks
of dry leaves blow across the grotesque graves.

The ones you killed were worthier than 1.
You spun your wheel, took them, and spared the fool,
the drunken killer-coward. I know why
you want my kind inheriting the world:
the good folk make you look so shabby, Lord.

Even I’m more virtuous than you.
I’d not command a man to kill his child
to titillate my pride, nor twist my son
upon a cross, then make up falsehoods like
“original sin” to expiate my sport.

Some day we’ll turn on you and make you run.
We’ll stalk you to the pit, thrust out our swords
and plunge them hot and sharp into your gut;
and when you scream and fall with flailing limbs
that will be your just reward, long overdue.

And skeletal arms will reach up from the pit,
hold you above the muck just long enough
for us to fling our torches down on you,
and when your oily smoke stinks in our nostrils
we’ll turn away, to walk our path alone.

Yet, O God, I wonder if we can?
I know we’re better off without you, Lord,
than suffering under all your foul commands,
but better only by the smallest inch.
And so I wonder. Will it be enough?