Einstein? Or Christ? My prognosis?
Dichotomy? Symbiosis?
What’s clearly seen, or just half-seen,
And man trapped somewhere in-between.
He is the skin that takes the sun
Through which the various mysteries run;
Where metaphysic turns to blood
What evil seemed, now pulses good.
The scientific method finds
The Holy Ghost that substance binds
And gives it name and draws up charts
And with its laboratory arts,
With shove where pull becomes mere push,
Says one in hand worth two in bush.
And yet the burning bush has voice
And from the blood of men rejoice
The singing tides of beasts that died
Of rank genetic suicide,
Or murders multitudinous,
As death with minus made a plus
Through wild survivals of the fit,
To sieve forth fang and claw and wit
And then amongst the many choose
Which live to win, or die to lose;
And on the path from bloody shore
To squander flesh, yet make it more;
And from the tidal meteoroids
Call mystery from winter voids
To bombard hippos whose vast brides
Are Nile or all the cosmic tides
That through the universe do thrive
And all time’s catacombs survive.
See! hippo’s skin which husks and keeps
Saints’ bones or scientists’ bone-heaps,
Both worshipped for their hymnal stuffs,
Theologies plus data snuffs
Which sneezed turn dust to fire and flesh
To all dichotomies mend/mesh.
So Holy Ghost now thrives in jaws
Where dental scientists seek cause
In microscopic bones they gnaw
To vanish deep beyond the law
Where God’s small molecules they find
But lose in countries of the blind
Where small, then smaller/smallest goes
In sub-electric Arctic floes.
And so with microscopes and men
We search—find what? The dark again
As out beyond, the universe
Goes by, one great celestial hearse,
Where stars, moons, planets, nebulae,
And silent-wailing comets die.
So we are circumscribed by nights
And all our first or second sights
Are bounded by too big, too small,
Where nothing reigns to us appall,
And purgatory our domain
Where monk and chemist meet again
And nothing know and nil profess
And ignorance and dumb confess,
But with pure theory, raw faith
Now interlock or inter-plaith.
Which man to choose? which right? which wrong?
How high is high? How long is long?
Now with God’s priests do we mock fact?
Or with great physics dare attack,
Shake stars, knock moon, then smite the sun
And only with pure reason run?
To with the biochemists boast:
“We’ve trussed and laid the Holy Ghost!”?
Church pew? Pure lab? My last prognosis?
Dichotomy or symbiosis?
To pick just one? I find me loath.
Try this for size:
A bit of both?