Into the Wilderness

[Wjames]

Into the Wilderness

As a bulwark against damnation,
the preacher made himself the strictest 
of the strict interpreters does 'of the strict' add anything? they're already strictest above.  I agree with knot and think saying 'the strictest interpretor', says everything that 'the strictest of the strict interpreters of precious texts' says, without all the words. Preacher already says what they would be the strictest interpretor of.
of precious texts, so to convince God
of his impeccable faith; but men 
who hedge their faith are men who feign.  

When his reckoning came, God discerned 
his subterfuge, so dispatched him to
the bare and broken plain — without 
a tongue or name — to wander with
the ever unrepentant Cain. Interesting rhymes in here, I'm not sure they work, but I like that they were sort of hidden in there. There is a lot of stop and start in this stanza, with those commas and hyphens, a lot is going on in one sentence and I don't think it's the smoothest. Each pause almost feels like its own sentence.

☙

I have a childhood friend who is so devoutly Christian that he believes I am going to Hell (for a variety of reasons) and that his parents went to Hell (for not being devout enough).  As a minister he has made a reputation for himself as a literal interpreter of the Bible, and it finally occurred to me that he is afraid that HE may end up in Hell if he isn't God's most ardent believer, and so I wrote this poem to express what I think are the doubts he has about his own faith but isn't facing.

Hey Pjames, I like your name.