hey salt his wounds, again, again,
Invoking ancient pagan gods
While he, the missionary, far
From succor, screams the Father's name
In garbled, blood-filled epithets
That foam out from his tongue-less mouth.

They piss upon his tattered robes
And rub his plain-carved wooden Cross
With dung. They shred his Bible, page
By page, and feed it to their dogs
With lumps of offal. Then they laugh,
Strip off their clothes and copulate.

He has no prayers left, cannot call
The psalms to mind; he only feels
The pain, and mourns the absences
Of fingernails and tongue and ears
And hope and faith, above all faith --
His faith in God, and God's in him.

The sun descends. They tear away
His bloodied undergarments, then
They paint his shriveled genitals
With honey. As they lay him out
Spread-eagled near a shapeless mound
He sees his death -- he sees the girl.

Her breasts, those once full, giving breasts
He'd bowed to like a penitent
Lay gutted now across her chest.
Her lips, those same lips he had kissed
With zealous passion now were gone,
Her bloodied teeth a mocking smile.

They tie her down as well and paint
The honey where he once had been --
Just once -- but that temptation was
A sin too sweet to turn away
When offered up so freely by
This dusky convert, full of love...

And then the chieftain takes a stick
And knocks it hard against the mound
While all the others chant and sing,
Their ululations calling down
The wrath of gods not sanctioned by
The likes of Holy Mother Rome.

A shimmering of movement, and
The mound reflects the nascent moon.
The girl cries out. The mound expands.
For those who sin are lost, he thinks
As, underneath the pagan moon,
The ants flow from their home and feed.