Impiety Attends a Mennonite Funeral

He would prefer to see himself

As suave as Mephistopheles,

A dark and elegant sophist

With fearsome powers of persuasion,



But he knows he's just another

Slovenly evangelical,

Home among sisters and brothers,

Chanting four-square hymns together,



Albeit one who's discovered

How cruelly the truth reverses

Their arrow of theology,

Their one way away from heaven,



This life, that is, the one they claim

Holds no death for them and no end,

Just affirmation of their God's

Linear dominance hierarchy, 



The Father, the Son, the Ghost, them,

Then angels upright, then sinners,

Then beasts lacking souls to salvage,

Then fallen angels at the end.



That end, the Fall, the sole haven

From life's perpetual tumbling,

Their piety considers cursed

When it's all the assurance left,



And the Imp, one rung above them

On the ladder to damnation,

Draws his own dim consolation

From knowing he knows what they won't.



God dwells at the very bottom

Of their deep wellsprings of belief,

Booming back hymnal melodies

In His sepulchral basso thrum.