"That Human Need and the Order of the World Are at Odds"

I.
Since Isaac and Arjuna,
questions of God
in silence and aloud:
why the knife, the oath,
the battlefield full of corpses,
why lamb’s blood
a wine for God,
why chariots of death
carry the world.

II.
When Lucifer leapt into the wind
like an assassin kite
on a spool of wire,
he performed the way murder
strikes out from calm,
how each paradise
is a changeling of violence,
a specter of terror
that sifts retribution
in its uneasy hands.