Classic Poem

There was a man who went to the wilderness for a home,
Building a cabin, grubbing out brush, breaking sod.
The first year drouth withered his grain and parched his meadows.
Plague came the twelve-month after, and his cattle were bone-pricked carcasses and a stench on the wind.
And in the third year there was hail.
Out of the green windrows of that cruel mowing
He lifted grimed fists to heaven
And laughed ...
Laughed ...
As he shouted:
" God! Listen to me, God, I'm telling you!
I'll beat you yet! "

There was a woman who looked on the mangled body of her firstborn —
Blood and dust, a thing that had kissed her an hour ago,
And would rot soon.
She laughed —
Great ragged gasps of laughter, ripping her throat, flailing her scrawny shoulders, until breath failed her, and she slept.
And the echo of that laughter ...
When the guns speak, and the sky is red with the wreckage of a dynasty, and fat things squeal and die ...
You will hear it.

Men watching a dream crumble into rubble and a spatter of slimy foam;
Men finding out the perfidy of someone they have loved;
Men learning that the tools with which they have sought to hew out new gods can compass only snow-men;
I have heard these laugh:
The laugh of the brave man who struggles up out of defeat to fight again;
The laugh of the wise man who knows that bravery is futile;
And the laugh of the idiot who is wiser than both, having died while they yet live.

Laughter is a dread, and a bitter, and a beautiful thing.
Take heed, Zeus!
We have forged of your own barb a spade that shall topple Olympus!