Damned by the stars that shone down from the night sky,

Damned in their light on the night of his birth,

The devil's in the detail and the detailed question is, Why

Would such heavenly bodies cast aspersions on his worth?

Damned from the moment that he first opened his eyes,

Damned all to hell as he drew his first breath,

Damned quietly, implicitly, with deep duplicitous lies,

Damned with a curse only curable by death,

Damned by the jealousy of wanton, fickle demigods,

Damned by the cold ocean's breath upon the air,

Damned by the facile, futile, useless demagogues,

Damned by the blood of birth drying in his hair,

And so in those first moments swaddled in this mantle,

Wrapped in his mother's arms, even then he understood,

That damnation was his curse, and his first example

Was the feeling of his hands awash with drying blood,

And he decided, as he had no say in the matter,

And as no stars would listen, nor deity explain,

He would take damnation as his chosen nomenclature,

And he would teach the gods a thing or two about that name.