The Lost Chapters of Moroni

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And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go. . . . — Moroni 10:34

Moroni 11

Zarahemla, the eternal city, is dust; as is everything that was.
In vision I see the world that comes: polio, lupus, Holocaust.
Disaster and diaspora are at once preamble and epitaph
to the good and careless God who makes me to wander and to fast
on unleavened hope to bury this last burden and be done.
The miracle is my evidence of thee: Urim,Thummim, Liahona

and dream of understanding everything. My affliction: your silence.
My proof: the possible rushing of your robes as the sky fills
with your invisible passing—or wind among last winter’s leaves—
and scent of roses as you leave. I reconsider all I’ve written.
You turn my memories to salt. I reach to Thee in each communion
of soon buried faith and forgetfulness of long vanished community.

Received from you: devastation and commandment to continue,
the vastness of your arbitrary will, too great for one to comprehend
who already was lost before the world began and soon will be again.
None of which I’ve written in your book, knowing you can blot me
as I would a word or scratch a sentence of me from these plates
were I to mention this consequence of my mission: to be gone.

None remain to stand between me and the end of time but you:
too far away, imaginary, a whisper. As God, to whom I now turn
ritually, disbelieving the silence of your reply, hopeless of Divinity
who saved none of mine. Out of time or temper, now resigned,
faithfully amanuensis to your last commandment of my last of life,
I keep the faith, I write upon the golden pages of your book.

I trust thee, without whom none are left still not to be discovered.

Moroni 12

In ways too numerous to number
the ones we love encumber
us. You may think me unkind,
especially if you are blinded
by being young, as I was

and—not much having loved—
took up the stylus and employment,
covenanting to be your witness,
not knowing how long witnessing
and worry can go on. Once, I had a dog,

now decades past. He died. As have my
father, mother, and others I loved
as much, never again for me to touch
or see across a table in that narrow neck of sun
now darkened by the pit this work has dug.

So, don’t speak to me of love enduring
when I have such examples otherwise inuring
with every chapter I transcribe
and woe and worry that before I die
I’ll disbelieve in what The Book testifies.

I’m sick to heart of living long and lastly
to be your witness of such catastrophe
as you relentlessly repeat, regardlessly
as baking or latching up your shoes. No!
You, who think believing is simply saying so:

Thrust your hand into my side. Feel these prints.
Taste my blood and know: I no longer will atone.