Ungodly Psalms: Report from the Cowardly Scouts on the Condition of the Land

This is the second part in a series of poems by Joe Grim Feinberg titled "Ungodly Psalms." Click here for the first part in the series.

Lord General!
The land up there is fine
but deadly.

Its valleys may be moist and soft and sweet.
Milk indeed 
flows from its hills.
But its plains are naked 
sand,
and also prone to floods.
They say, moreover, that
in rage it struck a whole sea dead
and left it there to dry
beneath the ruthless sun.
Its face is worn by wind,
skin pricked with desert stubble,
bruised by fast-slung stones, 
scarred by blows
of twisted olive wood,
swollen with boils of ancient rubble 
mounds,
festering wounds 
stitched up with vines,
hair gray with dried-out streams,
chin speckled white 
with crumbs of fallen walls,
lips dripping gold and red 
with honeyed blood,
teeth as sharp as mountaintops
and white as enemy bones.
It devours all who settle there.
Its stomach rumbles
as its victims clash and churn within
until it spews them out 
into the stinking marshes 
of its unwashed loins. 

Besides, Lord General—
even if we wanted it,
it’s full.
Giants roam the hills, 
mosquito armies prowl the swamps,
murderers lurk in the deserts, 
peasants till 
the soil with ploughs that cut 
like daggers,
and one 
of us, from a mountaintop, spied 
Philistines arriving, splashing 
the coasts with breathless waves
and scratching the beaches with their keels.
You said it was promised
to us?
And how many others?
Lord!

General, we won’t go up! 
Your orders—we 
respectfully
refuse.
It will be better 
to sulk back in our tents 
in no one’s land
than walk into those Moloch jaws 
and slide into that gut of war!

Apologies, Lord General! 
The land’s all right,
the milk and honey,
grapes and figs,
they do tickle the tongue.
But our stomachs fancy less
the seasoning of swords.