Along the dark street,
with waning Christmas lights in January,
the exorcist returned home.
He took off his damp overcoat,
sat in his worn armchair,
and held the tips of his fingers in each hand alternately.
The cold had got into them.

"And so will death release us?
Into judgment?"
The trade he had plied all these years,
and eroded the sharp edges of faith
and the water had receded to reveal veins of inexplicability.
Every so often, it was the same story:
a young boy sent to fetch him, the devil was hard at work,
he arrived in the ramshackle house,
a distraught parent, spouse,
and the diseased, the unclean,
would sit staring, or frothing at the mouth.
He would say his piece, his bored litany,
and ask everyone to leave the room.
In the quiet, he would hold his head in hands,
and stare at the wretch that lay in pain.
"I cannot help you," he would whisper,
the lucky amongst you will wake up the next day or week or month,
and praise the name of God and His messenger,
the less fortunate, would pass into the shadow of the valley
the contest having slipped out of mankind's hands.
And mine.

"A salve to the wounds of the remaining
the anima, the soul, the blasphemous Brahman,
what does it mean beyond the reach of our time and mortality?
We build castles in the air and cathedrals in the twilight of our lives."