Part 1 — the rise of the Innovators*
Once
Upon a time
There was a place
(Deep in a gravity well)
Where the tick tocking of time
Had ran on ever and a day
At the same pace
***
Nothing much happened
In that Arcadian land
If by nothing
You will discount
The circadian rhythm
Of love, life and death
And the unspeakable wisdom
Shared by all living things
Sorrow and suffering
Were no strangers here either
The world turned as it ever had
With little perceptible change
***
Until there came a time when a generation of innovators arose
Their leader Moskin foretold of a new dawn for Man
Their goals were as lofty as they were broad:
To dissect the nature of light
Tirelessly unweaving rainbows and
Scoring the music of the spheres
Building ziggurats of knowledge
To outreach the nearer heavens
They freed themselves from bondage
To their historic chthonic fears
***
Moskin proved one could
Slow the passage of time
By accelerated activity
And so the pace of daily life
Increased to a frenzied pace
Each person began to dream
The dream of endless life
This world’s animals, plants and trees
Were excluded from the new hope
Of immortality
They stupidly persisted
Living and dying
In the same old quick ways
***
A kind of conservation
Could clearly be seen
Each new technology
And extra day of life gained for mortal Man
Was paid for in an increase in the speed of
Slavery and death of the other species of living things
The contract — if one can call it that —
Seemed well struck for our bright new Men
***
After a time the people
Had almost forgotten
The genesis stories of old
Of immortal beings that once gave birth
To fast dying life and terribly mortal Man
Despite and amidst this brave new dawn
The outcast Maker tribe still sang
Of the magic that precedes
Measurement and words
***
Led by the holy Akptah
They sang old songs of Man’s sympathy
With all forms that carry the fire
Reminding Man in the age of innovation
Of a brotherhood and bond
Writ in the oldest language
From when first the clay grew tall
Even before the spoken word
Hymning of wordless wisdom
***
Singing:
“When we slow time
With speed
And fuel our fires
With the burnt offerings
Of our brethren
What we gain
Must be conserved
By what is lost
Countless are
The steps of the Tao
To the eternal.
Your unholy grasp of time
Will end in tears
A day in the light of wisdom
Is as a thousand years”
***
The poets were ridiculed (or humoured)
By these perennial neo-people:
Strange artefacts
Myopic mystics
Fast-dying remnants
From slow time
When Man
Knew so much less
***