THEN Later, there would be doctrine. After whispers and mayhem; After dinner in a locked room and a show of hands; After “mass hallucinations”, private consultations, Promises and re-commissions; After sea and sand and sunrise, And a parting in the clouds. After fire falling, filling, overspilling; Raging and enraging; After news and bread and bodies breaking. We would tell our stories, and again, And we would get them straight; Repeated words, half-heard before, would ring, Would gather meaning; Ancient writ would be appropriated, scandalously. We would write an awful lot of letters, Later. Then and there, however, there was only death: The murder i