Before the beginning of time
God
Exists.
The unmoving First Mover
The uncaused First Cause of
Everything
Exists
Within Him
The inevitable course of
History
Exists.
From creation to destruction
Good and evil
Joy and suffering
Perfection and paedophilia
Latent
All
Exist.
Predetermined
Fated
In every detail
The seed of the universe to be
From beginning to end
Alpha to omega
Exists.
There is nothing else.
For every improbability
From the value of pi
To the origin of species
From gravity
To relativity
The explanation
Is here.
After that:
Mechanics,
Entropy,
Winding down.
Conveniently,
All questions
Unanswerable
Author notes
Interesting to think about Aquinas' first cause and the infinite improbability of something complex enough to cause all the improbabilities of the universe.
Do you believe that a good explanation is more or less complex than what it tries to explain? [Reward: double points]
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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I really like this poem. It's simplicity is key to creating the emotional flow of the story. I also enjoyed the one word lines - short, simple, and keeping to the point. The only part I could find that jumped out at me was the segment about "pi". It just seemed so... well, in the rest of the poem, you are talking about the greatness of the universe and how still God existed before it all... and then you bring up pi. In my eyes, pi cannot compare to all this. It's just a number, a physical number in a poem of otherwise "otherworldly" concepts. It was created by humans so that we could find the area of a circle... it just doesn't seem to be on the same level as the rest of the metaphors you choose in the poem. That's just my take, however. Good job.
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The value of pi
Thanks for the kind words.
Strangely enough, I have never thought of pi as a human invention. It seems to me one of the great natural constants and something that humans could only discover. Certainly it was never invented. No-one could have imagined a number that cannot be expressed as the ratio between two other numbers. It implies that if we measure the diameter of a circle we can never precisely measure the circumference in the same units. To me it is one of the great mysteries.
vic
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First cause. First effect.
Echoes proliferate through time.
Infinite regression, each effect
the source of the following cause.
When the dog catches her tail
there will be a great dawning.
. Rewarded 4
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excellent
A very good poem. You dow rite a story that sounds very good to read and enjoyable.When you write, you want to question every word and ask yourself: "What work is this doing?" The best parts of your story will be doing the most work by serving multiple functions. They will not only describe the concrete physical surface, but hint at other facts, judgments, and ideas. You want to make abstract words like "pretty" more specific, and you don't want empty detail.You acheived all this and more.I like the epilogue in these lines:
After that:
Mechanics,
Entropy,
Winding down.
Conveniently,
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I believe that All explanations religious, scientific or otherwise require a leap of faith. (How do you know all of this is not a dream? How do you know "you" are not just a brain in a vat being fed sensory stimili? etc. etc. You cannot really "know" anything - you must merely pick a starting point from which to "believe"). Therefore what is a "good" explanation is relative to the seeker and what it is you seek. In the absense of simple, clear universal truths that we, as humans - as mortals, so desperately long for, we "need" to conjure up elaborate "explanations".
... we continue to "try" to understand and explain the UNfathumable. Apparently that is human nature - to conduct exercises in futility. - NANGALEEMA
. Rewarded 8
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no
It is great to ponder such deep things, either as a test of faith or in a search for reason. But a good explanation cannot examine the fullness of many things. It will become mired in detail, lost in tangents, or pretentious in it's bias. For example, much of modern "truth" is nothing more than theory predicated on supposition and supported by more theory based on lack of knowledge... the finite tries to explain the infinite.
A good explanation tells the parts that are truly known
. Rewarded 8
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I refer you to 'Brainwashed', the last track on the posthumous album by George Harrison. This poem put me in mind of just this very track. High five, but in lack of five, high three xx
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