Time’s logic is no logic
but the disturbed compound reverie
of a seminarian’s demonology.
His weapon’s pedagogic
threat, the unsheathed Word.
The temporal genius of despair,
Renan wrung rhetoric’s naked hair.
In a diamond urn interred
their wedding was sheer misery.
Grace becomes phenomenon, aware
of callings. Destiny,
queen to the fossiled century
of time unredeemed and faith made scarce
in the perfume’s tattered ecstasy.