The leader was barren.
He could father neither children nor ideas.
He sought the help of modern science
To cleave into being
The complex forms that he could not confess.
The leader was barren.
Science and patience
Gave him hope
So clearly announced
Resolving on the basis of deep evidence.
Trial and effort
Delivered forth the child.
Praise be the lord
(And his patient wife).
Modern science
Had given him
That most prizéd gift
The inheritor, the image of himself.
No longer barren
The leader mulled
On death and power
And sought to unshackle
The fecundity of fear.
Now he despiséd science.
He needed not its calculations
Its risk and innovation.
Would not god provide
As always, through sheer belief.
Would not god’s plan
For the end of the world
Deliver rapture to all his believers.
The leader denounced the rigour of science
Deploring its worrying quest
For truth beyond the bible’s words:
Its search for solutions!
He preached an unthinking gospel:
Do not worry
Do not fret
God will provide.
And god did provide:
The worm within the bud
Eating away
At the ebbing lusciousness
Of all his heirs.
So speaking in tongues
The leader offered his own soporific:
Denatured belief in god’s kingdom
Where greed would consume
And triumph in destruction:
When extinction beckoned
The reborn would cleave
To the righteous side of the Lord.
Banning dark thoughts
And protests
The leader banished science from his realm
And chattered in ‘bubble’ speak
In circles of eternal elimination:
Plump and weak
His beatific smile
Harboured the end of time.
All would be well
When the summoning trumpets - dies irae
Struck down the unbelievers.
Then the torched earth
Would hum a dark song
Fire picking its way across the skein of destruction:
Heaven and earth in ashes ending
Quaking on the lost thought of human kind.
Bereft of ideas
Awaiting deliverance
The leader smiled
Knowing his business was death.
November 2019
Gar Jones
He could father neither children nor ideas.
He sought the help of modern science
To cleave into being
The complex forms that he could not confess.
The leader was barren.
Science and patience
Gave him hope
So clearly announced
Resolving on the basis of deep evidence.
Trial and effort
Delivered forth the child.
Praise be the lord
(And his patient wife).
Modern science
Had given him
That most prizéd gift
The inheritor, the image of himself.
No longer barren
The leader mulled
On death and power
And sought to unshackle
The fecundity of fear.
Now he despiséd science.
He needed not its calculations
Its risk and innovation.
Would not god provide
As always, through sheer belief.
Would not god’s plan
For the end of the world
Deliver rapture to all his believers.
The leader denounced the rigour of science
Deploring its worrying quest
For truth beyond the bible’s words:
Its search for solutions!
He preached an unthinking gospel:
Do not worry
Do not fret
God will provide.
And god did provide:
The worm within the bud
Eating away
At the ebbing lusciousness
Of all his heirs.
So speaking in tongues
The leader offered his own soporific:
Denatured belief in god’s kingdom
Where greed would consume
And triumph in destruction:
When extinction beckoned
The reborn would cleave
To the righteous side of the Lord.
Banning dark thoughts
And protests
The leader banished science from his realm
And chattered in ‘bubble’ speak
In circles of eternal elimination:
Plump and weak
His beatific smile
Harboured the end of time.
All would be well
When the summoning trumpets - dies irae
Struck down the unbelievers.
Then the torched earth
Would hum a dark song
Fire picking its way across the skein of destruction:
Heaven and earth in ashes ending
Quaking on the lost thought of human kind.
Bereft of ideas
Awaiting deliverance
The leader smiled
Knowing his business was death.
November 2019
Gar Jones