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Poetry Magnum Opus

In the Beginning


dedalus

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I n the Beginning was the Word,

But this Bible claim is clearly absurd,

Since it cannot ever hope to explain

The pulse of previous generations.


Our prayers, nonsense, and venerations

arise in a subsequent world of make-believe

in which all that we can ever conceive

is based on the foreplay of the mind.


We wish to be kind

towards our fellow beings. But not always.


The world is a glittering stage,

and we all have our hopes to strut upon it

in intervals between sickness, war and death,

until the final curtain.


And then, when the final curtain descends,

with orchestral cymbalic crescendoes.

all the recently very important dead

soon fade away, fade away.


Drown your sorrows in drink, by all means, but the real sorrows can swim

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Your final stanza answers your title perfectly. A true existential (an overused word) fitting. I despise crecendoes; I'd personally prefer MacArthur's "Old soldiers just fade away." I think it's not just old soldiers, as your words indicate. Enjoyed the mental workout.

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