Fiach

Days One Through Six, Etc.

You keep on asking me that-
"Which day was the hardest?"
Blockheads! They were all hard.
And of course, since I'm omnipotent,
they were all easy.
It was Chaos, to begin with. Can you imagine
Primeval Chaos? Of course you can't.
How long had it been swirling around out there?Forever.
How long had I been there?
Longer than that.
It was a mess, that's what it was. Chaos is
rocky. Fuzzy. Slippery. Prickly.
As scraggly and obstreperous as the endless behind
of an infinite jackass. Shove on it anywhere,
it gives, then slips in behind you,
like smog, like lava, like slag.
I'm telling you, chaos is--chaotic.
You see what I was up against. Who
could make a world out of that muck?
I could, that's who--land
from water, light from dark, and so on.
It might seem like a piece of cake
now that it's done, but
back then, without a blueprint,
without a set of instructions, without a committee,
could you have created a firmament?

Of course there were bugs in the process,
grit in the gears, blips, bloopers--
bringing forth grass and trees on Day Three
and not making sunlight until Day Four, that,
I must say, wasn't my best move.

And making the animals and vegetables before
there was any rain whatsoever--well,
anyone can have a bad day.
Even Adam, as it turned out, wasn't such a great
idea--those shifty eyes, the alibis,
blaming things on his wife--I mean,
it set a bad example. How could he
expect that lttle toddler, Cain,
to learn correct family values
with a role model like him?
And then there was the nasty squabble
over the beasts and birds.
OK, I admit I told Adam
to name them, but--Platypus?
Aardvark? Hippopotamus?
Let me make one thing perfectly clear--
he didn't get that gibberish from Me.
No, I don't need a planet to fall on Me,
I know something about subtext.
He did it to irritate Me, just plain
spite--and did I need the aggravation?
Well, as you know, things went from bad
to worse, from begat to begat,
father to son, the evil fruit
of all that early bile. So next
there was narcissism, rage, vengeance!
And finally I realized, the spawn of Adam
had become exactly like--Me.

No Deity with any self-respect
would tolerate that kind
of competition, so what could I do?
I killed them all, that's what!
Just as the Good Book says,
I drowned man, woman and child, like
so many cats. Oh, I saved a few
for restocking, Noah and his crew,
the best of the lot, I thought. But
now you're all back to your old tricks again,
just about due for another good ducking,
or maybe a giant barbecue.
And I'm warning you, if I have to do it again,
there won't be any survivors, not even
a cockroach! Then,
for the first time since it was Primeval
Chaos, the world will be perfect--
nobody in it but Me.

By Philip Appleman
New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996
University of Arkansas Press
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Fiach: I highly recommend this book for those of you who like poetry.

Fiach

Duvenoy

Excellent!

Thanks for the read!


doov