Avert Your Eyes,
or
Robert Landsburg

This sonnet first appeared in the 2019 issue of the Boston University Beacon and won the Beacon Prize for Creative Writing.

God’s fury is a personal affair;
to watch hellfire rain down is to blaspheme—
the brimstone and the boiling, muddy steam
that sublimate souls into ash-grey air.
At Sodom and Gomorrah Lot’s wife earned
just retribution for her sinful eyes,
and turning, looking at those she despised,
for her base curiosity she burned.
The camera is man’s stubborn will to last,
immaculate witness, blessed memory,
the hands that held it flayed by energy
exploding in a rush of pyroclasts.
Observe the blistering mountain as it slides;
or if you wish to live, avert your eyes.

Be Not Afraid

This sonnet was featured in Episode 35 of The Cryptonaturalist podcast, “The Quiet Folk.”

The angel’s glacial halo shone quartz-white;
its eyes were as a half-quenched magma flow
sunk deep within its visage of pale snow;
its two-edged sword of bluish diorite.
I fell at its foot-hills until I heard
its voice like rivers flowing from its mouths—
basaltic, porous symphony of sounds
creepingly metamorphosed into words:
“I am the earth’s beginning and its end—
what is, what was, and what someday shall be.”
It laid a craggy weathered hand on me,
its touch like the caress of a dear friend.
The seismic voice a benediction made,
ground-shattering and sweet: “Be not afraid.”