A melancholy bleat disturbs the air,
Shattering the scorched stillness of that land,
Beneath the precipices of despair,
Where Eden’s curse stains every grain of sand.

What land is this with brazen, barren earth?
Where iron heavens parch each stone with woe,
This arid land apart, despoiled of mirth,
Where streams of unabating sorrows flow.

A world away from Elim’s gurgling springs,
This cheerless place, where lilies never bloom,
And eye has never spied a bird that sings,
Where Pathos rules his wilderness of gloom

Here no man ever thought to pitch his tent,
Afraid to rest on Adam’s baneful dust,
Death’s arena, where angel never went,
Erected by the reckless hand of lust.

Dwarfed by a skull-like crag, a forlorn goat,
Wrapped in a veil of deep’ning solitude,
His head weighed down by sin’s defiling load,
Burden of monumental magnitude.

His mournful call crescendoes, rending stone,
Echoing through the holy courts on high,
Expressing agonies of soul unknown,
“ELI, ELI, LAMA, SABACTHANI?”

by  Ian Campbell