Gott ist Tot

No gods in these swamps.
A crow sharpens his beak on a black branch
And the sun stops above the corpse
of a priest stabbed inside his own temple.

The gods are dead.
A snake slings onto the lips of a well,
and drinks from the mouth
of a whore smiling at her own reflection.

Mother Earth!
Pulls men and priests
into the slime of these swamps, and
offers them for sacrifice before the night’s out.

Subagio Sastrowardojo

(From Simphoni, Jakarta, Pustaka Jaya, 1971, p. 9.)

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