Post-Babel Tower

If the world was not so large and spinning And progress had not led us to uncertainty If we had not lost so much time beforehand Forgetting the lines of our grey sages

Perhaps we would have chosen our paths differently And used our talents and eccentricities To some culmitive end, worthy of the focus

Perhaps we could have shed these surfaced scowlings In the expression of real ideas In the first enthusiasm of success

Perhaps we could have avoided this quiet, motiveless inertia Pushed the boundaries of the nascent day And true to form made proof that things have gotten better That the world is not a squirming place, misrepresented Through the flash of computer screens and cyberspace

Perhaps we could have been fed, with virtue a mind within us Overwhelming the death of spirit plaguing us even yet To weave it all together in one testament of the age To show you, indeed, that we have lived

And maybe then, it would not be so absurd To believe in something, these religions, these endeavors To say that knowledge well-used is a tool to human progress And that there is some seminal work, requiring of us yet

But for the moment we reside in lethargic bunks Sleeping, reading, meeting, and forgetting Leeching upon all that was good before us Silenced by the stone of cold cathedrals Deafened by the palms of street beseechers With only phencyclidine visions to guide us back to the vineyards Where real themes still subsist, and legends still are written

We are the cluster children of the millenial age Holding the stays of a fading Babylon So we might as well be known by a hollow title "The Unbelievers" would be fine