The sun is red, the Earth is dead
Should men be free
These weighty questions
The gods of war are quite well fed.
The wind throws up a cloud of dust
Which grinds at rocks and stumps and rust
To smooth the bumps, day by day --
Discontinuities away.
It wipes the scene sterile, clean
To erase the trace of all.
And satisfy
Plato’s eye
To make a seamless billiard ball.
For Man has done what was begun
With gas and boiling rock.
At one short blow
It all did go
When mankind stopped the clock.
To disagree?
Conform to community?
Does God care for men’s long hair?
Should one use
The electric chair?
May one consume
Pigs or kid
Or view films on Saturday
To satisfy one’s id?
For political digestions
Erupted with a hot atomic breath,
To bring a fatal strife
On the proper way of life
But a smooth concurrence
On a way of death.
© Jan Sand