Everything that is necessary is a ritual,
And a ritual is only finished when we do it alone.
Religion belongs to our solitude,
The sacrifice done by the sharpener of the stone.
You laid things out the night before,
And then you took the other through the door.
You wish you hadn’t decided to reject
Love—but you work, and that requires respect.
If you are bored in the back of the church,
You belong to the millions who belong
To a ritual so you might escape it.
In your heart you secretly love a song,
A hit, which everyone else is listening to.
To make a knife, with a knife they scrape it
With all the patience they expect from you.
You were depressed and who knows
How you languished. But now
You are less troubled. You wear the clothes;
They don’t wear you. If the cow
Must be eaten, the sacrifice must be made.
The ritual of sacrifice is a ritual of no choice,
The symbolism of shadow is yours in the shade.
You needed no religion to remove every aspect of my voice.
The ritual is performed best by a crowd
Because in a crowd we are never free.
The performance was loud,
Unlike the quiet freedom of my poetry.
There is no ritual to an abortion. Just have it done.
Freedom is free of ritual. But, yes—once, they did have to sacrifice the son.