Master of the Leaping Figures

Under his hand the great book
glows with lapis lazuli, red,
gold, and in the smoke
of fire-balls falling on the city.

Outside, the torturer's art:
figures hung up by the thumbs,
jerking on a blackened ground.
Devils fill the castles and
the people reel in a divided land,
fleeing from the horsemen;
peasants are forced from the fields
to drag carts loaded with stone,
and the crops rot.
Men say openly that Christ
and His saints sleep.

Under his hand, they do not sleep.
...