John McAuliffe The Weather
Is coming down around them and filling up the fields
But they are Sunday drivers, stuck in a dead end, with their heads
Buried all the while in table-sized road maps that approximate
To where they live, in what we'll call the Hall of the Present Life,
Its walls loud and impermeable as radio and its roof screwed shut
So they rarely notice the emissaries of the Hall of the Western Paradise
Who dwell among them at crossroads, off diamonds and country lanes,
Who take many guises, whose form is fluid and inconstant,
Who will receive the souls of the dying believers,
Who on their vests wear the names of those who paid for their creation,
Who carry in one hand a rope for binding, and in the other a knife for killing.