It took 80 years to build it, in the European style
It was chiseled out of limestone, meant to stick around a while
The cathedral’s vaulted ceilings and its celebrated towers
Were a physical reminder of God’s powers

Now the national cathedral is a victim of the quake
See, limestone’s great for stacking, but it doesn’t like to shake
Was it purely seismic forces here that led to some collapse
Or is something greater happening, perhaps?

The cherubim and seraphim have fallen to the roof
No casual observer could demand a better proof
Lord Vader’s fearsome visage is untouched on the façade
Where he mocks the claimed omnipotence of God.

We’d be foolish to ignore them, as the signs and signals grow
Someone’s sending us a message—“Under God” has got to go
And we’ll have to change the slogan on our currency, of course
To the safer hollow motto, “Trust The Force”

Explanation, after the jump:

The National Cathedral in Washington, DC, has suffered some damage as a result of the earthquake a couple of weeks ago. At the cathedral’s website, there is a gallery of quake damage photos–displaced towers, limestone fragments fallen to the walkways, cracked flying buttresses, and the like–but the most dramatic photo I’ve seen is by J. Scott Applewhite for the Associated Press, accompanying an NPR story on the damage.

The NPR story does note that one particular grotesque has been the object of a great deal of concern; people have been asking about the Darth Vader decorative sculpture. It was not damaged.

I think there is a message in this.