To Holofernes

This was a short poem I wrote in response to the story of Judith from the Old Testament.

Your kind were truly inhuman:
Demons straight from the depths of hell.
Was your only burning desire
Really to be happy and well,
Or was it to smite the sacred?
Alas, only time will tell.

Erik the Red
Would shake his head
If he knew what they did to you.
Speech and pen
Did turn you in
To heretics through and through.

Did horns replace your head of hair,
And cloven hooves your feet?
When you spied upon your servants,
Did you cackle with deceit?
Did you wish only violation,
Or were you plowed just like the land?
Were you capable of kindness,
Or more Mephostophilis than man?

She caught you in your weakness,
And hacked until you were dead.
She was soon praised and martyred
For relieving you of your head.
But if your sin was killing,
Was she not a sinner instead?

As you lie in time's lowly pit,
This place your final doom,
On a gleaming throne she doth sit
In a stately stained glass room.