The Silent God

Drunk behind the karmic wheel
in a speeding tank,
he's anarchizing the freeways
of nature and sanity,
order and tradition

He's done making suns and seas,
forests and deer,
birds and bees:
now it's skyscrapers and cities,
life-support and mushroom clouds,
infernal life and living disease

And what after-all is he,
this twisted half-existent super-being:
creator of millions of cars,
trillions of stars,
Shakespeares, Buddhas, and Hitlers?

Great creator,
Why make the wonder of the rose,
the agility of the gazelle,
the brilliance of an Einstein,
yea, the amazing courage and compassion of a Jesus:

and place it all
amid a sea of barbarians,
countless deviant, brutal barbarians?
Why do you make so many of the wicked
among the brightest,
and many of the pure and noble
weak and guillible?

Ah, and here comes your Thoreau,
who says but take away from the reformer
his private ailment
and he'll abandon cause and comrade.
Yes, then, why make me?
Why make a man so in love with life
yet so unfit to live it?
Why make a man
both strong and weak,
mad and brilliant?
Why did you give me such strength
when I was evil,
and now that I'm changed and repentant
plague me not only with weakness...
but guilt that taints every bliss
and engulfs my sanity to the hilt?

I ask these things
neither literally
nor in cynical cunning.
I expect no angel at the door.
But as a divided soul
weary of temptation and calamity,
still I hope
for some reply,
some clarity,
some serenity