You came with crosses-

I wrote this three and a half years ago.

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You came with crosses, across the sea
foot bound to hand and hand bound to mouth
with a book of creation carrying old tribal memories
from a desert place far away from my grandmothers.

You came as men with shaved heads and perfumed scalps
and you read the empiricist’s words to people who sang to mountains
and heard mountains sing back.
You told them this is the glory of heaven on earth, but all your gods are demons, and you must rebuke them and cast them back,

This Jesus is now your saviour, you must forget everything else.

Your women must cover their hair lest the Sons of God lust for them.

These old laws here must now supplant your laws of hospitality, honour, artfulness, and love.

But our piety was in the keeping of vows and covenants
to hidden people that fled at the mention of your Mary and Christ,
who the Aradia tells us are the true devils.
And you told us we revered the Old Serpent on the Tree,
and we began to tell ourselves this Story,
because you were our enemy and cut down our groves, and took our fires, and told us our mothers, and sisters, our lovers, and friends, were beneath us, and good not speak the Word.

You were wrong.

By sword and horse, and fire, your mercenaries led us to baptism by coercion,
by force my grandfathers were made to bow to your iron and gold chains,
and later by the same dictums you put us on boats and sent us forward to do your wicked work of invading others’ lands to exorcise your own sicknesses.
And so many of us were sick with your illnesses, had forgotten our own lore and laws, that in violent terror did we allow the taking of sovereign lands and the massacre of sovereign peoples.

But my ancestors were clever.
They hid Him there, hanging on the Tree,
they learnt good words, and dressed Old Ones in the shining faces of saints.
They kept their hymns to the moon, the sun, the stars, the winds, the trees, the Good Neighbours.

Some of them forget, but the Spirits never did.
And wariness of your Church was passed from my grandfather, to my mother, to me.
And so I was born a heathen, a pagan.
This is not my religion.
This is my ancestral grievance,
this is my genetic law,
this is what I have to give to this Holy Earth.

I rebuke your Books.
Instead I will steal Fire from the Gods, be haunted, and harrowed, and chased to my end, to my depth,
so that I too – one day – might become a Mighty One to serve my descendants in this battle against your lies and how they enslave us all.