Creation Revisited

I just revised this old poem from "Poems from Providence," and wanted to share its slightly more coherent new incarnation. This is based on the Bishop Ussher's declaration that he could name the exact day of Creation: October 23, 4004 BC. Counting forward, I made an intuitive leap about what God might have been up to eight days later. I also seem to have anticipated The Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster, a wonderful religious hoax now all over the Internet.

CREATION REVISITED

1

According to Ussher,

the Bishop chronologer,

the act of Creation commenced

no later than Four Thousand

and Four

Before Christ  — 

thus spake the annals

of the knews and begats

traced back to Genesis.

Those Hebrew midwives

remembered everything!

According to Lightfoot,

an even more accurate Anglican,

God started the commotion

on Sunday the 23rd

October, 4004 B.C.,

fossils and Darwin

notwithstanding,

to the very morning,

to the very hour

of God’s day shift

a workmanlike 9 AM.

2

Now just imagine

the confusion of Adam,

wandering through jungle,

surveying the plains,

leaping to hilltops,

alone on the Eighth Day,

his God mysteriously absent

after the sudden, tiring burst

of creation: Man, the afterthought.

He finds himself alone,

lord and progenitor,

mouthing the names

of leafed and feathered things,

saplings and hatchlings,

chrysalis and cub and lamb  — 

big-headed and knock-kneed

lnone knowing their names,

their natures,

ignorant of who should eat whom,

oblivious to sex.

Adam revels in the chaos,

in his sole possession of

the magic power of naming.

But now the horizon rages

with whirlwind, flashes

with fire-tongues, shakes

with terrible thundering.

A heaven-arching demon

splits the zenith, its eye

reptilian, its formless

cloud-bag hung with tentacles,

an airborne jellyfish.

Its vacuum maw extinguishes

unwary birds, uprooting

trees, reaching for Adam.

Its suckers engulf him,

lift him to cloud-top.

And Adam screams, eyes shut

at thought of too many eyes

and countless tentacles. No way

to make a name for this one!

He weeps at the idea

of his own annihilation.

God laughs, resuming his form,

the gentle greybeard Father;

puts Adam on mountain peak,

roaring with merriment

at the first man’s terror,

leaves him mystified

to clamber back to the garden,

asking Why?

against the unanswerable.

First day of his life,

he is seized by a monster,

mocked by his Creator.

Last day of October.

Halloween, 4004 B.C.

Trick or Treat.