A Non-Epic Epic Subject: David and Bathsheba turned into halting phone poem verses, mostly. In any case, here we go.
Bathsheba
King David saw her bathing
On a nearby royal roof;
Desire quickly enflamed him,
And he summoned her—forsooth!
Long dark hair and heavenly eyes
Spoke to him like God’s sunrise;
Shape of a woman and perfect face
Led to the King’s divine disgrace;
For, no King is above the law—
Murder and lust—his demonic downfall!
Alexander Pope might have placed me in his Dunciad had he read such a thing. Forsooth. Nevertheless, I do not hold back on my non-epic epic. Thus, Here’s Nathan, the Prophet:
You!
Nathan told a story
Of a poor man and a rich:
David wanted Justice;
The prophet pulled a switch!
That was not your vineyard,
And you were not bewitched!
You are the man—the sinner,
Who jumped headfirst into pitch!
As everyone should know from his or her Bible, pitch defiles. Should you wish to see a real literary example, tour Dante’s Inferno with Dante and Virgil. One of the ten “pouches” or ditches in the area of Fraud Simple is filled with pitch, into which Dante himself almost fell. The problem with the image in this verse is that David’s betrayal of Uriah the Hittite is an example that belongs in Fraud Complex. Uriah had a personal relationship with David, his King and commander, and David betrayed him. That kind of unrepented Fraud ends up in the realm of ice in the final circle of Hell, where we also find Judas and Satan. Why is David not there, you well may ask? Dante’s Comedy, for the most part, is filled with sinners, with only several exceptions. The Virgin Mary, for example. Purgatory and Heaven contain repentant sinners; the whole purpose of Nathan’s confrontation of David was to make him see his sin and repent it, which of course David did, even though Bathsheba became his wife and bore him his son Solomon.
The only real choice we have, since there is no sin in Heaven, is to give it up, repent it. Ha, the sin gets dropped into Hell, I have read; if you choose to hold on to it, you will fall there with it. That has always seemed to me an arresting image, especially since sinning is habit forming and the tracks formed by our habitual sins sink deeply into our souls. Well, mine do. I expect to spend much time in Purgatory working at getting rid of the tracks or stains, something I should be doing now, I know, here, or here and now, so to speak.
Bathsheba.