Shall I rest?
Set down the steel and lay myself low?
Would You ask this of me,
to give up the evil ways I have come to know?

In the waging of war, I’ve grown weary.
Who will sing of the treacherous things I’ve done?

I lift my hands high, sins gleaming red,
and see the horror they have brought.

Gaze upon my iniquity, my life is forfeit.
I am left a mess of a man
that no person can mend.

Oh, my God.

I’ve whispered Your name,
have seen Your face,
yet past mistakes now haunt my days,
disgraced.

The trap I’ve set for my enemies’ feet
has caught my own instead.

I cannot exit.

Oh Christ, I beg, extend Your reach.
If You choose to batter and destroy,
it would be deserved, at the very least.

I cannot exit, Lord.

In turmoil I persist,
between this world and the next,
longing for the aether.

What You once freed,
I’ve cast again into captivity.
The soul Your fingers brushed against
has been set aflame on the altar of wickedness.

The pyre burns,
bearing witness to my demise.

With clarity I see:
it was never You who left,
it was me.

Misericordis Salvator, sana hunc hominem fractum.

At the end of it all, I ask, O King:
might You once again
plunge me deep
in the cleansing waters beneath?

I cast myself before Your feet,
and come without a thing.

If You would but place Your hand upon me,
that is all I should need.