Armageddon Approaches

by Walt Garlington (July 2026)

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Black clouds banished the sun,
Wild gales ripped away the roofs,
Lightning struck the ground
With relentless violence,
Booming thunder made
Even the ground to shake.
It seemed the end
Of the world had come.
The people fled to the church,
Begged St Leoba
To stop the raging of the storm.
From prostrate prayer she rose,
Thrust off her cloak,
And trusting in the intercession
Of the Ever-Virgin,
Threw open the doors,
Facing the hellish storm,
And with the help of the Holy Cross,
The Mother of the God,
And the mercy of Christ,
Routed the thundercloud.
Darkness fled away,
The sun shone brightly,
Calm and peace were restored
To people and land.
.
Twelve centuries have passed,
And another storm rages.
Not a storm of nature
But of human strife.
Munitions and missiles
Fall without mercy,
Their fiery blasts
Tinging the clouds a lurid red,
Concussive shock waves
Tear them to tatters,
Countless buildings and human bodies
Pulverized, incinerated,
In the onslaught.
The shell of a church
Stands amidst the rubble.
A few dead corpses lie within,
One door barely hangs upon its hinge.
Who will pray that
Armageddon be forestalled,
What saint will stand before
The satanic war machine
And smash it into pieces
By the power of his holy prayer,
To save humanity from being
Obliterated by the weapons
Of its clever making?

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Walt Garlington was born and raised in that part of Dixieland called Louisiana. A chemical engineer by training, he has spent the last several years writing full-time. He has written essays and poems for The Hayride, New English Review, The Tenth Amendment Center, The Abbeville Institute, Reckonin’, Katehon, Geopolitica, and USA Really. He writes regularly at his own web site, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.

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