Pope Android Seventh!
He rides, he soars, he flies!
He husbands comets, frozen brides
Who, raped by sun, do run in ruins
Round our cosmic clock.
While taking stock he strides
An attic universe,
Recircuits trash made fabulous with time
Confesses light-year dusts that radio-whisper sin;
Rushing they know not where,
Knowing not where they’ve been
The Holy Roman robot sifts back our stuff and bones
In Sunday-drowsed collections,
Enzymed resurrections of birth
Half-lost, half-found between
The rimless rim above and micro-scene;
Thus grounding us in liberal wrecks
Of chat and converse, arguments long chopped at knees:
Did we ape down from trees?
Are we bright soul most glorious concave
Or mere raw flesh, convex?
And what is sight?
A mind-dreamed fibrillation of lost stars?
Does Mars exist? Is all we see real, true?
They hint the sky above’s not blue at all,
But leans into a blue from light diffusion.
Illusion is all, the rapt confusions gutter and go
To dust. Can Android Seventh’s lust of circuitings
Run with his vacuum mouth to ingasp night and outpour light
And know more than we know?
We wish it so, and send him on his swift
Miraculous missions to lift holy catcher’s mitt
And muff hot stars,
Encircle sun.
Dip in its soundless fusions to fetch back
In dearly full-cupped hands from burning brink
A drink of gods, or God, thus solar-fire we drink
And feed our flesh machineries of blood
With good that pours from sun, much more than good.
What else?
Why, Pope Android the Seventh packs with him
A poem of John Paul First,
Pacelli (Pius Twelfth)’s dry thirst for Bulls.
John Twenty-Third’s warm cantaloupe-round smile.
He relic-carries popes from all the seasons,
Their sweet reasonings are lubricant to him,
This mendicant of space, supple his limbs,
Because the thigh-knee-leg-ankle bones of
Pius Sixth (the Quick!)
Run jungle gyms within his armored pod,
While from his diode beehive head Jehovah hums
Beethoven’s hymns, or Mozart’s tunes.
His enterprise? to flying buttress far Andromeda with Bach,
Prop up the skies, anoint lost moons.
His halo? Saturn’s rings! His orb? red eye of Jupiter.
His holy water? meteorfalls of asteroid.
The void his altar-high-throne-sepulchre and shrine,
Where Holy Ghost snows by to show pale Hailey’s face,
A look of premonition in its panicked eyes,
Light-year remembrance in its silent-wailing mouth,
To ask for wine.
For this we send our papal robot there?
For more. We hang on air a tapestry of will,
Our dumbest fancies fished into a sieve
We give, computer-multiplied to space.
His papal tongue remembers and then sounds
The tidal whisper from the Galilean shore
Where Christ’s footprints ascend the April winds
And are no more.
From bored Earth filled with doubting Thomases,
Undoubting Android Seventh, fired with promises,
Ascends, and his The Sermon on the Mountain in tapes,
Plus other gifts of hope to hopeless apes,
Who would not apes remain,
And lambs and wolves will change and share and rise
On worlds we cannot know,
Because our Holy Robot blessed them so: “Now, go!”
And there they go!
For reference, our miracle,
That from brute seas we rose on land,
Gave it some neighborhood constructions,
Towns and wars and much destruction, yes,
Then—final prize! Swift towers of flame and—lo!
Up space, the marvelous monkeys rise!
But Android Seventh flies first!
He goes to prepare the way,
He sifts, he saves, he gives.
Where Android moves,
Christ lives.
They wait together.
Ten thousand priests
On Earth will fade while celebrating feasts
Yet this pope yeasts on Matthew, John, Paul, Mark,
On cosmic balconies gone dark beyond Andromeda
He’ll beckon us as beasts
And bless our bloodied hands and wash them clean.
He’ll trumpet call our race:
O, prodigal sons, that roam
Come home, come home!
For the true Second Coming is you, you—once blind
Mankind. Bring soul, bring mind
The tests and the trials are past,
Arrived at last, man brings peace, please God, not a sword.
Come as children-men,
To play forever beyond forever
In the bright morning fields of the Lord.