Poem: ‘Once and Since’

1. Once

We built our Babel out of bricks
And black granite slabs hauled on rollers
Sliding up the slope to pile on the piles.

We only got so far, of course: a fraction
Of that whole we blueprinted, or sketched
In sand — a stump, no soaring στυλος.

It was so easily tumbled down
Jenga’d with a jerk of God’s back hand
And we were banished, babbling, dumbed.

.

2. Since

Wisely, some might say, we have since
Swapped height for breadth, pillars for plastic:
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Is 1.6 million square kilometers
Imperishable (as bricks are not)
And ever accreting, bigger, bigger.

Low enough, profile-wise, or profile-
Foolish, to sneak under God’s radar
But more ambitious in scale and scum

Than any Babylonian tower. Here
Is our monument, our unity of substance,
The one thing we all share. Our at-last

Big-enough challenge to God’s throne.