Edmund Griffiths  

E d m u n d   G r i f f i t h s




A prophet of Baal

You don’t like talking about the past.
But I think you were there that morning on Carmel,
hoisting metrical psalms to storm-mastering Baal;

and I think, when it came to it, you wouldn’t hurt yourself—
you just bowed your head and stepped out of the dance.
As you walked down the hill, away from that sky,

did you look back and see the other side smirking?
Now you hide yourself here in a country parish
where it often rains and we ask few questions:

I suppose even now it still goes with you
that perhaps if you’d done it the god would have listened,
and perhaps even then he would not.