Howard Firkin
"... add faith, Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love, By name to come called Charity, the soul Of all the rest; then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far." — lines found underlined in a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost
I spit on Charity. I spit on fools
who kiss defeat, who think my cause undone.
No paradise is lost—it’s not yet won.
The one who sits in judgement sets the rules
and you will all, one day, be judged by me.
You worship the eternal you surmise,
but stone outwaits the moss; the rain, the stone.
You only see the world that you’ve been shown—
you clever things, you’re in for a surprise
when I allow new worlds for you to see.
Tectonic isn’t slow for all. I blink
in aeons. God himself taught me to wait.
The thing you worship isn’t what you think,
and I have plans for you. I call them fate.
who kiss defeat, who think my cause undone.
No paradise is lost—it’s not yet won.
The one who sits in judgement sets the rules
and you will all, one day, be judged by me.
You worship the eternal you surmise,
but stone outwaits the moss; the rain, the stone.
You only see the world that you’ve been shown—
you clever things, you’re in for a surprise
when I allow new worlds for you to see.
Tectonic isn’t slow for all. I blink
in aeons. God himself taught me to wait.
The thing you worship isn’t what you think,
and I have plans for you. I call them fate.