Black Dog Blues Sestina
by Alan Jackson
Hand me down those walking atheist blues,
take me to a time and place that softens like unfocussed dream.
Help me shake the dread of age, decrepitude, and certain pain
that final nothingness which lurks for mine and me.
Yet the rational intrudes and harsh reality bites me back,
how much easier it must be to just believe? I wish that I could fake it.
Or, like others, convince myself that I too can see it.
The saintly face in the sacred shroud or the subtle blues
of the Bernadette’s Madonna on their cave back.
Wish that I could catch the tail of their waking dream
and patch some over the open wound that is me
when darkness and depression reign, and all around is pain.
Why can’t deliverance shine through my window pane?
Is the saving light too brilliant for unrepentant sinner to take it?
Perhaps some things are just not for the likes of you and me?
When times are hard and meaning loses me, I’ll sing those blues;
convince myself that life’s a half remembered dream,
until the black dog mood drags me, weeping, back.
No scripture, stricture, or priestly rule to hold me back.
Don’t need holy writ, scroll, book, or paean
to tell me how to think and what to dream.
No one tells me who to hate, or how much better it
is in their heaven than I can conceive. Or that their vengeful God blews
a forgiving zephyr across all mankind, except that is for me.
Freedom has its cost, and it can seem too high for me,
but unbidden these sly thoughts keep coming back.
Man – not God beats his fellow men a range of blacks and blues,
Man – not God enslaves his brother and sister in a world of pain
then takes God’s glorious name in vain to try to justify it.
How could I want a slice of such a sick sad sorry dream?
Four and twenty virgins could be mine says a bomber’s dream.
They wait plump in heaven, recumbent, panting just for me.
All it needs to reach such heights, they really make it
clear, is to take out some pagan infidels. Oh, and don’t come back.
What kind of hurt and crippled God rejoices in such innocent’s pain.
I’ll pass on the succulent sanctified virgins. I’m busy singing those atheist
blues
So, though it scares me to admit it, I’m just a dreamer without a dream.
Not quite as godless as I’d wished, this blues. I’ll sing it for those lost
souls like me;
turn the black dog back if we can, and prove some respite from spiritless pain.
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