Calamity Rising (revised)

The Day of Judgment claims the setting of this play,

Where the sun once bequeathed is soon to flee the day.

Stage right, the devil waltzes to the angel’s lute stage left,

While mortals rise upon the bridge to hear their morning debts.

Vermillion skin or golden wings seduce their haughty eyes;

They flock to their enchanters and prompt the sun to rise.

So begins the final morn as the rapt approach their fate,

But curtains draw to center stage where a reprobate remains.

The director instructs the audience to applaud with false avail,

While wail at noon he does instead to cast the wretch to hell.

The outcast, now disgruntled, finds his temptress behind the stage

Has ensnared this early eve the lead by whom he was replaced.

Twice rejected and one scene elapsed, he plots to turn the tides;

Before dusk he joins a vengeful troupe to help him in his plight.

These actors are only parcels of the playwright’s teeming cast;

Tonight they seek to take the pen from the dead hand of the past.

The director, who through the day subjected them to pain,

Is unaware, with the moon’s ascent, his puppets will invade.

A hairbreadth from sundown, the usher heeds the threat,

But the audience, in haste and in horror, has already left.

Finally falls the sun as planned by other than the rightful hand,

And the play, now among the damned, dissolves into the darkened land