Early Bronze Age

New beliefs, fables, polities,
And religious systems followed
Metallurgy, not just weapons.

The smith-and-the-demon fables,
The philosopher’s stone legends,
Stories about dwarves in the mines

And dragons guarding hoards of gold,
Along with long-distance trade routes
And hereditary control

Of coffers of mineral wealth
Came with the new swords and helmets.
Given that, don’t you think it’s time

For some strikingly new systems
Of myth-making and government
To start cropping up about now?

Are hegemonic nation states—
By degrees democratic or
Autocratic—here forever?

The religions that swept away
Earlier religions, are they
Robust mythologies these days?

Is technodeterminism
Too weak to guarantee new forms
In the wake of revolutions

In quotidian existence
Revising power relations
Far more than metals ever did?

We await tomorrow’s demons
And strange political systems
Already overdue today.