The First Six Seals

I have no utensils, not a blanket. At one point I was given sheets by local people,
but I gave them to a pregnant women. We feel forgotten by the world… we have
nothing.

As reported by Médecins Sans Frontières, Ireland

I

I watched the Lamb opening the first seal and heard one of the four
living creatures thunder, “Come forward.” In leaped a white
Abyssinian—its rider wielding a bow. She was crowned and sent
forth to conquer, to abduct innocents and use children as human
shields under a lapis blue sky.

II

When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature
cry out, “Come forward.” A red Bale rushed in with his rider,
flashing a huge silver sword in hand. He was given the power to end
peace on earth, to ambush and to slaughter those crossing the Tekeze
River, rape children, bomb classrooms—and seize the two million
meals the fool Abel Tesfaye, The Weeknd, offered to Tigray.

III

Now he tore the next seal, and the third creature said, “Come
forward.” In galloped a black feral colt and its rider. A strange voice
from the midst of the four living creatures cried, “Burn the moringa
leaves, burn the harvest, burn any and all seeds—starve displaced
humanity and all refugees—be merciless—pillage Médecins Sans
Frontières compounds.”

IV

When he unsealed yet another scroll, a fourth creature cried out,
“Come forward.” In plodded a poor pale green Horo and his rider
named Death—accompanied by Hades! They were given authority
to kill Tigrayans, midwives, doctors, humanitarian aid workers
(María, Tedros, Yohannes), attack hospitals, spread COVID,
malaria, cholera, HIV—and commanded to never, ever, bury the
dead.

V

As the fifth scroll was unsealed, souls of slaughtered holy innocents
appeared under the holocaust altar: mothers with child—praying the
martyrs’ prayer for vindication, “How long will it be, holy and true
master, until you avenge our deaths on these evil ones?” He told the
holy innocents to rest until their innocent brothers and sisters were
killed as they had been killed—then each innocent was given a pure
white robe.

VI

When I watched the final opening, there was a seismic quake—

The sun turned black as goat skin.
The moon waxed blood-stained.
Stars struck the earth like winter figs in oceanic cyclones.
Clouds split like a papyrus roll rent in two.
Every mountain fell, and every island sank.

Presidents, poets, prophets, priests, the powerful (especially the
greedy), but even the poor, hid in bomb shelters like rats scrambling
from light, calling, and texting from their cellphones—

“Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one
who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the
Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come
and who can withstand it?”

Print