Walpurgisnacht: (2015 "a law of conservation of" in human history)

It seems Walpurgisnacht
can neither be created nor destroyed;
for scarcely had the Knights returned from Palestine
when Inquisition and then Witch Trials 

started torturing confessions     
“Yea, I flew my broom to Sabbath Night!
The Lord of Darkness was an he goat!”
(emphasis on ex!clam!a!tion)
out of writhing innocents

& then burning them alive,
(which they would never do to pigs or chickens,
which is known as “overcooking”).
They were practicing a form of human sacrifice 
known as “burnt offering”.

It smelled like sweet & sour pork 
before it smelled like charcoal...
It was Hell on Earth!
The mob was chittering like imps.

Then, when the courts began to get suspicious,
colonies took up the slack.
They drained off chaff & wheat alike abroad
to leer self-righteously at Temples of the Sun.

Descendants of Witchfinder Generals
are still paranoid about those 
toxoplasma gondii-infected people,
but they give them toxic psychotropics
in their homes these days
instead of burning them alive in public.
        
The Crusades is now the War on Terror,
and the fractious Trinitarians are now climatologists.