The Invisible World, Perceiving the Imperceptible

Dan Williams

July 4, 2022

We are winning the fight against an invisible enemy.

—Vice President Mike Pence

The title says it all, Mather’s The Wonders 

of the Invisible World, his righteous defense, 

of unrighteous trials, the wild histrionics, 

the girls thrashing, jerking, pointing fingers, 

the testimony of hostile neighbors, children

accusing parents, the paradox of pleas, perverse 

inversions of confession, damnation redeems

while innocence condemns, convicted by 

belief, by spectral evidence, by testimony 

of apparitions, unseen and evil, shadows flitting

 about, beating, torturing, urging villagers 

to sign the Book, a fiendish plague unleashed,

 devils and witches swarming, assailing, 

assaulting the upright most grievously, shape-

shifting specters witnessed and accused,

indicted for inflicting grievous suffering, 

the horrid courts, the nineteen executions,

ministers and magistrates alike perceiving 

the imperceptible, the invisible world.

Dan Williams is the Director of TCU Press and the TCU Honors Professor of Humanities. His second collection of poems, At the Gate, A Refuge of Sunflowers and Milkweed, is from Lamar University Literary Press.