How Clever We Are

"How clever we are
To be able to escape from God,
The one who is everywhere.
Let me tell you how it was done.

"First we ripped out our eyes
And hid ourselves from the heavenly declaration.
Then we ripped off our ears.
Nature's glossa can no longer reach us.

"The orderliness of words is laced with His presence.
So we ripped out our tongues and throats.
Even this poem is an abomination.
(Oh, can we never escape Him?)

"Life itself is an evil;
Every beat reveals its maker, every breath its source.
So we cut out our hearts, and lungs too,
And passed them through the fire.

"Our very minds betray us to Him:
All thinking betrays to reason, all reason to truth,
All truth betrays us to Him,
It is illumined by His presence.

"This thing we will do: we cut off our heads,
And dashed our brains against the rocks.
We have put away childish things:
God, and our hearts, and our heads.

"How dare our hands feel and commune!
They offend us; we cut them off.
How dare our feet touch the earth of legend!
They offend us; we cut them off.

"But whither shall we flee from Him?
All things contain Him; so we turn to no-thing,
We cast our bodies live into Hell.
We are very clever, indeed!

"We finally escaped Him.
In the burning dark you hear us sing,
'We are damned and doomed! Alone and afraid!
We couldn't be happier!'

"Escaped at last.
How clever we are, indeed."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2008