Kuppner, Frank

Last Eternal Moments
(excerpt)

1. #80
2. In a quiet afternoon, on the seventh floor of the library,
3. Among the numerous long rows of undisturbed volumes
4. Devoted to various aspects of religion and philosophy,
5. I caught sight of the nymph. She was in the next bay,
6. Elegantly disfiguring selected clamant textbooks
7. With charming little diagrams, most of them obscene.
8. What are you doing, I asked her, shocked to the core—
9. For I knew the answer at once. Do you not understand
10. That such behaviour could seriously compromise
11. Your status as a ticket-holder? Those warning placards
12. Attached to the walls and doorways leave little doubt of this.
13. She finished drawing a neat, intricate vulva
14. On a book about a great religious leader
15. (The second greatest ever produced, perhaps);
16. Replaced it, thus enhanced, on the shelves; turned round;
17. Gazed deep into my eyes; then slightly deeper—
18. And spoke as follows in a warm, melodious,
19. Deeply convincing voice. Listen, my overweight friend.
20. For millions upon millions upon millions of years the dinosaurs…
21. As did any number of defunct genera before and after.
22. A stratospherically exact number of such occasions
23. Available to the assiduous, omniscient researcher.
24. And every one of our great religions was still in the future—
25. Which is to say, nowhere—for the future is nowhere, as is
26. The diarrhoea which the plums will cause, before the plums are eaten.
27. For billions of years, no terrestrial had need of them.
28. How curious, then, that none of your great religions
29. Is more than .0002% of the age of the earth.
30. And none, I dare say, of our non-great religions either.
31. It shows you just how misleading statistics can be, doesn’t it?
32. Here: this morning’s newspaper provides further examples
33. Of the inexhaustible richness of Man’s spiritual heritage.
34. Another few dozen, it seems, have been killed in that Indian town
35. Where a deity was once born in the form of an elephant.
36. Or was it a monkey? It was a monkey, I think.
37. Yes; the more I consider it, the more a monkey convinces me.
38. It has a pleasantly pseudo-Darwinian ring about it.
39. Perhaps another God was born nearby as a barrel-organ.
40. (For who are we to assign limits to his powers?)
41. I would suppose that, if God is to appear anywhere,
42. The most obvious place to do it would be China.
43. That China wasn’t chosen seems itself sufficiently damning:
44. Our largest civilisation is there, waiting for him.
45. That would surely be the most predictable place to start.
46. Perhaps it goes against the grain to be so predictable?
47. Or perhaps, on second thought, he had little choice,
48. Given his unfortunate opinion of the pig,
49. But avoid a country where porkers are ubiquitous.
50. How thoughtful of God, to give us his opinion of the pig.
51. Which of us is not, after all, allergic to something or other?
52. But what a pity he failed to be equally specific
53. About some more contentious, metaphysical questions
54. Which have been argued over for year after year after year,
55. And not infrequently killed for. As far as I understand it,
56. We may cull this mighty lesson from many profound religions:
57. God has revealed innumerable vital truths to us;
58. But no-one can say for certain exactly what they are.
59. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll take off my underpants.