‘St Boniface’s Children’

 

Heathen Germans, how uncouth!

We sneer and wince

At their war-like ways,

And wasteful revelries,

Their silly veneration

Of gods and groves.

 

Having denounced them roundly,

We offer devoted worship

In the temple

Of our technological

Moloch, a religion

Far surpassing

Anything devised

By pagan man

In the terrors it has wrought:

 

Violence has been

Vitiated,

But at the price of free will,

Unknowingly coerced

By unbending algorithms.

 

The joyful extravagance

Of festivals

Has been eliminated

For the sake of mirthless,

Cold efficiency –

Masterful at

Multiplying profits

And murdering

The souls of men.

 

Not just the trees

Dear to the gods,

But the beasts, soil,

Rivers—the deities

Themselves—have become

Corban, offerings

For the Machine

To devour and transform

With its snaring wires

And grinding gears

Into the products

Its digital avatars

Tell us we can’t live without.

 

Our links with the divine

Have been severed,

And who can restore them?

When Germany was hard gripped

By pagan lies,

Sundered from the Truth,

St Boniface, English-born,

Appeared amidst

His Old Saxon cousins,

Preaching life in Christ.

 

His love of Scripture

And the lives of the Saints;

His imitation of all

He beheld in them—

Mercy, temperance, and prayer,

Generosity and patience—

Enlarged his heart, and through this gate

Gushed the Grace of God

Upon the Teutons,

And felled Donar’s Tree,

Established the Trinity

As King.

 

                        This same man,

This same martyr, made

Supremely mighty

By the deadly wounds

Of Saxon spear and sword,

Lies waiting in his tomb

In Fulda, patient as before,

For his Western children

To seek again

His paternal blessing.

And when sincerely sought

And fully given,

The hideous dividing wall

Built by Techne’s devotees will

Burst at the brightness of Christ;

The artificial barrier

Between God and man will shatter

Before the splendor

Of the Comforter.

The final sound

Of the mechanical

Abomination will be

Its death clatter,

And the ringing bells

Of a thousand hills

Of churches near and far

Will tell all the world

That Holy Boniface

Has returned to guard

And guide his people!

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!