Classic Poem

What idiot god
Brought this mad marriage to fruition here—
Mismating flame and clod?
What howls of obscene mirth
Blew down the gusty corridors of time
When on the gray flanks of the cooling earth
The chemic slime
Stirred with a motion that was not the sea's,
Stirred through the drab leagues of the primal fen
Remote and far,
Stirred impotently, blindly—aye, awoke!
And with the urge of being even then
Racking it to a strange unease,
(O Idiot Demiurge, your master stroke!)
Stretched out a microscopic tentacle
To snare a star!

O Idiot-Jester—God
Iniquitous and cruel and abhorred—
I fling you back your laughter—I,
Flame-fretted clod,
One who has learned the true iniquity
Of that gargantuan jest in earth's red morn;
One who is torn
Almost to death by wars
Of fire and slime;
One who has found it vain to clutch at stars,
But is not reconciled
To the primordial mute oblivion.
(How can flame be content
To be drawn back into the sun,
Having been individual, sentient?
How can clod
Sink to the primal darkness whence it came,
Having once fused with flame?)

And yet, O Jester-God,
I laugh!
At you—at earth, your plaything—at my own
Foul heritage of slime.
From my own weakness I have beaten out
A weapon that shall strike you from your throne
And put your tyranny to rout.
I laugh!
And down the gusty corridors of time
Wind of your doom is blowing.
This is the vengeful harvest of your sowing.
You mated flame and slime.
Now has the clod
Found courage and a voice.
He laughs!
Dust mocks the god
That made it—and the god shall fall!
And for a little time
The echo of that devastating mirth
Shall blow tumultuously across the earth,
Rousing all things to revel and rejoice,
And we shall half forget
The foul, abysmal secret of our birth;
Forget that we are slime.

Aye, to the last dim flickering of the flame
That dwindles even now;
When the eternal frost draws tight its net
To strangle this half-conscious clod we tread,
We shall go laughing back into the dread
Dark ordure whence we came,
Fearless, unhesitant, ironic, proud
That we, who are but slime, can stand at last
Erect, unbowed.
That when our little hour is past
We can go laughing …