i will never forgive you

This isn't quite the second poem I expected to share on here but the writer Cormac McCarthy died this week, so I thought it only fitting to post something his work inspired. I've only read one book by him (many more are on my tbr), but that book—The Road—sunk its teeth into me and hasn't let go. A violent image but then, we are talking about McCarthy. If you haven't read anything by him, he's known for his dark and often gruesome depictions of humanity, usually set in the American South or West and usually written in prose that’s light on punctuation and heavy on staggering sentences that will do things with language you didn’t think possible. Many consider him one of the greatest American writers, of our age certainly and maybe ever.

I read The Road a couple summers ago, and it reminded me of the biblical book of Job, just set in a post-apocolyptic America. I once heard a sermon about Job in which the pastor said that to doubt God and wrestle with him and rail at him is still faith because you're still engaging with God, still reaching out to touch God, even if it’s with rage or fury or skepticism or despair.

I guess the only other thing I'll say to set up this poem is that no one work of art should be expected to bear the weight of someone’s entire philosophy or worldview. And that Job is not condemned for his questioning of God, nor Jacob for his wrestling. Neither Job nor Jacob end in those places but they had to go through them.

He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.

- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

                i will never forgive you for history 
i believe in your bigness in your absolute authority
in your great clumsy hand holding the pen 
spilling ink as you spill our blood 
every time a baby dies i see the strikethrough
you slashed across the manuscript
maybe you say i’m sorry or it’ll be better this way but
down here there is a tiny cold face and parents
who can’t breathe

                i will never forgive you for history 
i believe in your genius in your staggering strategy
that would dazzle the mind of a being like you if there was one
but there is just us: small, easily broken
on a planet we do not know how to take care of
in a universe that hurtles by in careless killing sprees
among persons so alien we will always be alone
and though every generation has tried we will never
understand any of it

               i will never forgive you for history 
i believe you hold time in your hand like a toy
so i have to ask how we could possibly praise you
for the miracle of penicillin when it is less than a century old
and a million millions died in the preceding millennia
from diseases you knew could be prevented? 
do you want us to wallow with gratitude at your feet 
like pigs mucking in shit? the list of pain is too long 
and your actions are too little too late

                i will never forgive you for history 
and tomorrow i will reflect that this means 
i will never forgive you for free will
i will comfort myself with philosophy
or better yet, theology, and the incarnation
will make me weep and i will say thank you
and mean it but today is one of those days when
i will never forgive you