‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’
(You note the plural usage — lower case?)
Thus the God of Hebrews, wreathed in glory,
Set wrath in stone to chide his chosen race.

’Twas ever thus, in manuscript or mural,
The gods command and trembling men obey.
Yet often I have pondered on that plural:
The deathless gods — the gods of yesterday.

Who prays to feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl?
Who to one-eyed Woden, lord of war?
Who praises Bacchus, god of flask and bottle?
Who mourns for Set or lusting Belphegor?

Who sacrifices meat in Chac-Mool’s bowl,
Or bows to humble Hestia in her home?
Who worships Baal with fervent heart and soul?
Do not the sons of Isis rot, unknown?

Astarte waits in vain for mortal prayers
While eight-armed Kali counts her grinning skulls.
Dread Thoth is but a carving on the stairs;
The brass bull Mithras tarnishes and dulls.

Beneath the earth, in fetid catacombs
Lie empty altars, flecked in gold and mud;
My friend, I tell you, once, within those rooms,
Lived mighty gods paid out in lives and blood.

Blood that ran in temples, pooling, seeping,
Gouting from the knives of stone-eyed priests.
Blood of sons and daughters, slack-jawed, weeping,
Slaughtered where they stood, like craven beasts.

And now the lamb of Bethlehem has brought us
The meaning of His Word — yet iron rods
Still bind the mind.  All history has taught us
To curse the names of thirty-thousand gods.

Immortals they were called, yet puny man
Still strides the world, their dust beneath his feet.
Let scholars sniff them out as best they can.
I spit upon their graves.  Revenge is sweet.